Originally from American Review of International Arbitration - ARIA

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The relationship between the increasingly unified system of international commercial arbitration and national legislation is of critical importance to the fair and efficient settlement of disputes arising in international commercial relations. It is too soon to say with certainty whether procedural law governing international arbitration can be unified in the near future. Few countries have separate statutes that deal exclusively with international commercial arbitration and only a handful of them have decided to incorporate into their legislation the provisions of the Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration, adopted by UNCITRAL in 1985.2 The appearance, therefore, of a new national statute on international commercial arbitration arouses a great deal of interest, in particular, the degree to which it coincides with the international standard.

This article examines the Law on International Commercial Arbitration, enacted by the Bulgarian National Assembly on July 29, 1988,3 Like arbitration legislation elsewhere, the Bulgarian statute regulates habitability, the arbitration agreement, appointment and challenge of arbitrators, the arbitral tribunal’s jurisdiction, conduct of arbitral proceedings, the award, and the involvement of courts in setting aside awards and enforcement. Although the new law does not refer to the UNCITRAL Model Law expressly, its structure, approaches to principal issues, and the wording of many of its provisions make it plain that its drafting was substantially influenced by the Model Law.