1998 Amendments to Belgian Arbitration Law: An Overview

Abstract

IN MANY countries the legislation on arbitration is regularly amended to conform to recent developments and to meet the needs of the business community. In France, the legislation on arbitration was amended in 1981. The Netherlands followed in 1986 and Switzerland in 1987. The Arbitration Act of Portugal dates from 1986 while the Spanish Act dates from 1988. The most recent statutes on arbitration are the English Arbitration Act of 1996 and, finally, the German Arbitration Act which came into force on 1 January 1998. To transform Belgium into a centre of transnational arbitration, the Act of 19 May 1998 ( Official Gazette , 7 August 1998) has two goals: 1. to improve the effectiveness of arbitration for conflict resolution, and 2. to adapt Belgian legislation to incorporate the most recent international developments.1 Twenty-five years after Part VI of the Judicial Code (JC) came into force, the government drew conclusions from Belgium's isolation in the group of countries that had adopted modern arbitration legislation. Belgian arbitration law was based on the 20 January 1966 Strasbourg European Treaty on a uniform arbitration law and it was the only country to have enacted national legislation on the basis of this treaty. More specifically, on 21 June 1985 the UN Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) adopted its Model Law. This Model Law is inspiring modern arbitration legislation such as the recent German Arbitration Act. The Belgian legislator opted to amend its existing arbitration law and did not introduce the UNCITRAL Model Law, not even in a slightly amended way such as Germany did.2 Unlike the French and Swiss legislation, the Belgian statute does not enact distinct rules for national and international arbitration. The flexibility which international arbitration tries to achieve also has clear advantages for national arbitration. However, the distinct rules on requests …