France has adopted a new statute on arbitration, Decree No. 2011-48 dated January 13, 2011 (the “Decree”). Thirty years ago, in 1980 and 1981, France was one of the first countries to adopt a modern statute that created a separate, specific legal regime for international arbitration. This regime incorporated a number of principles that have since become widely accepted, such as compétence-compétence and the limitation of the grounds of recourse against international arbitral awards and of judicial interference in the arbitral proceedings. Over the years, the French courts have also developed an extensive set of precedents favoring the effectiveness of arbitration, such as a broad principle of autonomy of the arbitration agreement (i.e., the arbitration agreement is unaffected by the fate of the underlying contract).

The Decree preserves the separate regimes for domestic and international arbitrations established thirty years ago and aims at strengthening the position of France as a leading, arbitration friendly venue for international disputes. Codified in Articles 1442 to 1527 of the Code of Civil Procedure, the Decree encompasses and clarifies the provisions of the previous statutes, confirms and codifies the existing corpus of case law and practice and incorporates a few innovations.

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