Originially from: World Arbitration and Mediation Review (WAMR)

The Proposed Venezuelan Legislation on Commercial Arbitration
At the end of 1997, legislation was introduced in the Venezuelan
national legislature to modernize the national legal regulation of domestic
and international commercial arbitration. Although Venezuela is a party to
several international conventions on arbitration (the New York Arbitration
Convention and two Inter-American Conventions on Arbitration), it has no
national law that specifically regulates commercial arbitration.
The Venezuelan Code of Civil Procedure recognizes a process known
as "civil arbitration", which—under Venezuelan legal concepts—is an
exceptional procedure by which disputes can be resolved by a third party
outside the ordinary process of judicial adjudication. Moreover, prior to
1987, parties to a prospective civil arbitration were not obligated to abide
by their agreement to arbitrate when a dispute arose. The 1987 revision of
the Code of Civil Procedure reinforced the process of civil arbitration by
making an arbitral clause binding upon the contracting parties.
Even with the foregoing modification of the codified law, however, the
Venezuelan domestic law on arbitration is a far cry from a modern
statutory framework on arbitration. There are separate regulations on
arbitration in specialized sectors, such as maritime, consumer, and
agricultural matters. By and large, arbitration is an ancillary feature of the
legal system, governed by regulatory concepts that date to the turn of the
century.
The proposed legislation seeks to create a modern statutory regime. As
currently drafted, it regulates the scope of arbitration, the types of
arbitration agreements, the arbitral proceedings, the powers of the arbitral
tribunal, the functions and obligations of the arbitrators, and the
enforcement of awards. The legislation applies exclusively to commercial
arbitration. The provisions of the Code of Civil Procedure on civil
arbitration and the separate rules on arbitration in maritime, consumer, and
agricultural areas would remain in effect if the bill becomes law. The
proposed legislation is modeled upon the 1985 UNCITRAL Model Law
on Arbitration.
The bill attempts to achieve a number of inter-related objectives: (1) to
give national and international investors in Venezuela a sense of juridical
security; (2) to recognize and establish the contractual freedom of
commercial parties to submit their disputes to arbitration according to a
framework of provisions that best serves their interests; (3) to guarantee
the adaptability, impartiality, and integrity of the arbitral process as a
dispute resolution mechanism; (4) to conform Venezuelan law to