Law Of Europe And European Arbitration System

Europeanization of law has greatly promoted the harmonization of European arbitration system. Although there are still some variances on concrete rules, the European countries have formed concurrent attitudes on the whole. European society usually attaches much importance to the function of arbitration, regards the autonomy of parties and encourages the parties in dispute to achieve a settlement with the help of arbitration tribunals. The European judicial authorities always intervene minimally in the arbitral process. We may borrow ideas from the positive attitude of European society, which is the primary cause of the long-term flourish of European arbitration. To promote the development of China's arbitration law, we ought to realize the significance of arbitration which plays an important role in dispute settlements in modern times. The monopoly of arbitral institution should be knocked out. The position of arbitrators, arbitral tribunals should also be emphasized. Adoption of the market principles may push China's arbitration forward and make it more close and convenient to civil society (Civitas). There are four parts in the thesis:I. Conventions That Pertain To European Arbitration Convention is an important way to Europeanization of Law. Now the typical European arbitration conventions are European Convention on International Commercial Arbitration and European Convention providing a Uniform Law on Arbitration. Moreover, major European countries are also contracting states of UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration and amended their arbitration acts according to the requirement of Model Law. Thecommon points of these conventions include respecting of parties' autonomy and limited juridical intervention.II.EU Law And Application Of Law In Arbitral ProcessThe impacts of EU law on application of in arbitral process include two folds: First,the validity of an arbitration agreement. Mandatory arbitration agreements are invalid under EU law. Secondly, the application of substantial law in arbitral processes is discussed. The application of EU law in arbitral process is really a complicated problem. EU law rules are applied in different ways according to their different efficacy. European Court of Justice always expects that the EU rules of horizontal direct effect should be applied on arbitrators' own initiative and tribunals can not be employed as an instrument of evasion. Nonetheless, European Court of Justice never intervene the application of law in arbitral processes and arbitral tribunals are not entitled to promote a preliminary ruling of European Court of Justice. As to the final results of application of EU law, i.e. whether the arbitrators apply the rules correctly, the courts of member countries, not European Court of Justice, can examine the arbitration awards according to standard of public policy in the process of cancellation or acknowledgement and enforcement.III European Public Policy And Cancellation, Acknowledgement Or Enforcement Of Arbitration AwardsAs a relatively independent political entity, EU has been endowed with its own public policy, which goes through all the EU rules and has become a part of the member country's public policy. When an arbitration award is considered by a party to be not consistent with EU law, the party is entitled to raise an application to a court of the member state. The application requesting the court to cancel or refuse to acknowledge or enforcethe awards should be based on the violation of EU public policy. European juridical practices show that,the violation of EU mandatory rules does not amount to the violation of Europe public policy. In specific cases,whether EU public policy was infringed should be considered carefully in member country's own legal circumstances.IV.EU Soft Law That Pertains To Consumer Disputes Arbitration In order to regulate the ADR including consumer disputes arbitration, EU established a great deal of soft law to shield the legitimate interests in an arbitral process and promote the fast and low-cost settlement of consumer disputes.