SPOILED FOR CHOICE? - LECTURE AT PÁZMÁNY UNIVERSITY ON LAW GOVERNING ARBITRATION AGREEMENT

27 November 2019

Our managing partner Richard Schmidt gave a lecture on the law governing the arbitration agreement at a conference organized by his Alma mater, the Pázmány Péter Catholic University Faculty of Law and Political Sciences.

The lecture took place on 14^th November 2019 in the framework of the Conference of the Scientific Students' Associations bearing the name of the outstanding Hungarian professor of international private law, István Szászy. The managing partner of our Law Firm, dr. Richárd Schmidt LLM was invited to make a lecture by Dr. Katalin Raffai Phd Department Head.

The law governing the arbitration agreement is a complex question of private international law, which essentially influences the effectiveness of the arbitration during the whole procedure: from starting the arbitration through the questions of parallel litigation and setting aside procures, until the enforcement of the award.

Besides its interesting nature, this topic raises a current issue, since law governing the arbitration agreement has been regulated by the new Hungarian Code of International Private Law, which entered into force on 1str January 2018.[1]

Richard started his lecture by presenting a case-study, then continued with the presentation of the international legal environment, by pointing out, that the New York Convention of 1958[2], and the European Convention of 1961[3] regulates this topic only indirectly, and national codes international private law and arbitration acts often fail to regulate this topic.

According to the idealist view of the jurisprudence, in order to avoid inconsistent judgments, the same law should be applied to the arbitration agreement in each stage of the legal dispute, however, the realist view holds that instead one governing law, we should speak about the laws governing arbitration agreement.

After the introduction, Richard, through examples taken from statutory law and international case-law, presented the 3 (three) major contemporary trends in the theory and practice: 1) the conflict-of-law approach 2) the validation principle 3) and the French “third” way.

In the closing parts of the lecture, Richard reviewed the International Private Law Act, which came into effect on 1^st January 2018, underlining, that while the solution of the Hungarian lawmaker in relation the material validity of the arbitration agreement can be criticized, because creates a risk of inconsistent judgments, when it comes to the formal validity, a modern solution has been adopted, which fits into the leading international trend.

Many thanks to Dr.Katalin Raffai, Phd Head of Dept. and to the Department of International Private Law the for organising this event, and to the students for the attendance and interesting questions!