Conference Report: Confidentiality vs. Transparency in International Arbitration

On 9 February 2011, the Centre for Amicable Dispute Resolution of the University of Warsaw, together with the Young Arbitration Practitioners in Poland (YAPP) hosted a conference on the all-time hot topic of confidentiality in international arbitration. The conference was organized in the wake of the third Warsaw Pre-Moot for the 18th Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot, which is focused on the very subject of the conference this year.

25 speakers from five European jurisdictions discussed the development of confidentiality in international arbitration and the most recent trends in arbitral practice, state court jurisprudence and national legislation, including a panel dedicated specifically to a comparison of jurisdictions on the issue, which also featured Philipp Peters, Counsel with Konrad & Justich, presenting the Austrian perspective.

With 160 registered participants, the discussions following the panel presentations were intense and reinforced the significance of an old latin saying: Quot homines, tot sententiae. In other words, the event made it quite evident that, on the one hand, the issues of confidentiality and transparency in arbitration must be dealt with separately in relation to commercial and investment arbitration, and on the other hand, it is impossible to recognize an international consensus even within each of these two distinct categories. In fact, even most recent developments suggest that a harmonized approach will remain out of the question for some time.

On an overall level, confidentiality seems to be, and promises to remain, one of the more contested subjects amongst arbitration practitioners and academics alike, and it should be expected that this was not the last conference dedicated to discussing the topic.