Ukraine as a seat of arbitration during the wartime

On, 24 September UAA together with UNBA and ArbCEE conducted the Webinar on Ukraine as a seat of arbitration during the wartime.

Our speakers Anna Guillard Sazhko, Oleksii Maslov, Prof. Nahnybida Volodymyr and Georgiy Grabchak together with moderator Olena Perepelynska came to the conclusion that despite the war, Ukraine remains a very attractive seat of arbitration:

Ukraine is a UNCITRAL Model Law jurisdiction with a very few deviations, so, you should not expect anything out of the ordinary when you have an arbitration seated in Ukraine. Just be sure to understand local arbitrability rules and be cautious if your case involves any russian or belarusian element, otherwise you could safely arbitrate your disputes in Ukraine. Still, there is always a room for improvement, so the UAA working group has elaborated proposals to change the Ukrainian arbitration legislation, e.g.to expand the range of arbitrable disputes (see more details and the draft law in Ukrainian here: http://surl.li/yqvdcd)

Ukrainian courts are arbitration friendly:

It is close to impossible to set aside an arbitral award rendered in Ukraine. During the last 9 years the ICAC tribunals rendered 2,774 awards (all in international cases), out of which only 162 awards were challenged, and only 5 (!) awards were set aside, i.e. less than 1%. During the war the caseload of the ICAC has increased (annual reports of ICAC are available here: http://surl.li/igbllv)
Creditors have 95% probability to succeed in enforcing an arbitral award in Ukraine against Ukrainian debtors or Ukrainian assets, even if your debtor is a state entity or the State of Ukraine. The entire enforcement exercise in two court instances will take about 9 months on average (even during the war) (UAA report for 2005-2020 enforcement statistics is available here http://surl.li/hufqhp), the new report for 2021-2023 will be published soon)
UAA has submitted several Amicus Curiae Briefs in the Ukrainian court proceedings dealing with important arbitration issues and in 2024 the Supreme Court has invited the UAA to submit an ACB on its own initiative

Ukraine cares about its investment attractiveness:

Ukraine has over 70 BITs and is negotiating some new ones
Ukraine has near 20 completed and more than 10 pending investment treaty cases.
Ukraine paid in almost all lost cases. The only exception is cases where the enforcement is still pending.

Ukraine has a diverse pool of arbitration practitioners of different age and profile, and you could have a good choice of arbitrators, counsels, experts etc. for your cases seated in Ukraine, including for arbitration-related court proceedings. (See UAA List of Arbitrators: http://surl.li/nnbmwl)

The recording of the webinar is available here: http://surl.li/wnsrcp.

October 15, 2024UAA & ASA Webinar on How to become a good arbitrator?

Ukraine as a seat of arbitration during the wartime

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