Reference to the UNIDROIT Principles in International Commercial Arbitration Practice in the Russian Federation

Abstract

The UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts (hereinafter: the UNIDROIT Principles) have become quite familiar to the Russian legal and business communities since the full text of both the 1994 and 2004 editions, with comments and illustrations, was translated into Russian shortly after its publication in the official languages. Over the years, the UNIDROIT Principles have frequently been used by Russian business people in negotiating international commercial contracts and they have also often been used as an authoritative source of information about the rules of modern commercial practice in the legal orders of countries with a developed market economy. Also, the UNIDROIT Principles have repeatedly been used as a source of reference in legislative work aimed at the further development of the Russian law on contracts, primarily the rules contained in the Russian Civil Code. This is because in recent years, a great many publications have appeared in the Russian legal literature dealing with the UNIDROIT Principles as the subjectmatter of scientific research. The academic analysis has tended to concentrate both on the significance of the UNIDROIT Principles as a source of rules of law reflecting the modern lex mercatoria and on the substantive contents of the rules themselves in the context of comparative law studies. This broad use of the UNIDROIT Principles in Russian commercial practice where it relates to foreign trade transactions could also explain why the application of the UNIDROIT Principles has become quite evident lately in settling international commercial disputes through arbitration in Russia. References to the application of the UNIDROIT Principles are not infrequently found in the awards rendered by the International Commercial Arbitration Court at the Russian Federation Chamber of Commerce and Industry