The general provisions of international arbitration in Russia have not changed for the last two years. The Russian Federation is still a member of the New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of the Foreign Arbitral Awards 1958, as well as the European Convention on International Commercial Arbitration 1961.
Since 2015, two laws regulating commercial arbitration in Russia have been introduced. The first is the Law of the Russian Federation dated 7 July 1993 No. 5338-1 on “International Commercial Arbitration” (hereinafter the “Law on ICA”) which directly governs international commercial arbitration. It was enacted in the early days of modern Russia and based on the provisions of the UNCITRAL Model Law on “International Commercial Arbitration” 1985 (hereinafter the “Model Law”).
Most of the rules regarding arbitration agreements, procedures and awards comply with the Model Law, with a few exceptions, adopted in 2006. For instance, competence of an arbitral tribunal to grant interim measures was provided in the Law on ICA, except for the recognition and enforcement of such interim measures (such power was left only for state courts). At this time, domestic arbitration was governed by a separate law.
The second is the new Federal Law on “Arbitration (treteyskiy proceedings) in the Russian Federation” (hereinafter the “Law on Arbitration”) which came into force on 1 September 2016 and primarily governs domestic arbitration. While the Law on ICA applies to international arbitration, several provisions of the Law on Arbitration apply to international commercial arbitration seated in Russia. These include:
• the obligation for deposition of arbitral awards (Article 39 of the Law on Arbitration);
• the requirement to get the state court’s decision to enforce an award that changes any state registers (such as register of titles, intellectual property rights, etc.) (Article 43 of the Law on Arbitration);
• the creation and functioning of permanent arbitration institutions in Russia (Chapter 9 of the Law on Arbitration);
• the correlation of arbitration and mediation in Russia (Chapter 10 of the Law on Arbitration); and
• the liability of an arbitrator and permanent arbitration institutions created by non-profit organisations (Chapter 11 of the Law on Arbitration).
AUTHORS:
Sergey Kovalev
Sergey Kislov
Evgeny Lidzhiev
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