Annulment of an International Commercial Arbitration Award: The Ukrainian Experience

Abstract

Background: The development of foreign economic relations between business entities is the key to a stable economy of each country as a whole. During the implementation of these relations, the emergence of disputes and the procedure for their resolution is one of the main prerequisites for giving preference to alternative dispute resolution, namely international commercial arbitration. Despite the existence of unified rules and standards for the recognition and enforcement of international commercial arbitration awards, which are enshrined in the New York Convention of 1958, many issues arise in the doctrine of international civil procedure and law enforcement practice. These issues are the result of an inconsistent approach to arbitration in the national legislation of the member states of the New York Convention of 1958. Methods: The article will consider the distinction in the definitive approach of ‘challenging’ and ‘annulment’ the decision of international commercial arbitration through the prism of comparative legal regulation and evaluation of the results of both the domestic doctrine of arbitration and foreign scientific schools. In addition, during the analysis of the numerical judicial practice of national courts, the problematic issues of the procedural procedure for annulment of decisions of international commercial arbitration and the grounds for their annulment are considered. Results and Conclusions: Among the results, some gaps and contradictions were discovered, in particular, the ideas of ‘challenging’ and ‘appealing’ such awards. These procedures differ in that within the framework of the procedure for challenging the decision of international commercial arbitration, and the state court has no right to review such a decision on the merits.