Under its new leadership, the German Arbitration Institute (DIS) endeavours to foster the relationships between the arbitration communities of Germany and of its neighbouring countries. To that end it is forging distinct working groups between German and neighbouring arbitration practitioners. The first of such groups to have taken up its work is the German and Dutch working group between the DIS on the German side and the Dutch Arbitration Association (DAA) and the Netherlands Arbitration Institute (NAI) on the Dutch side.
The DAA/DIS/NAI Dutch-German Arbitration Working Group is currently co-chaired by Tom Claassens of Loyens & Loeff and Andreas Hacke of ZHMP. It comprises seven participants from the Netherlands and equally seven participants from Germany, all versed practitioners in international dispute resolution. All participants share a specific interest and experience in the respective other of the two countries and in the international trade and the resolving of commercial disputes between the two neighbours.
After a first get-to-know session held online in September 2022, the group met personally for its inaugural meeting in Düsseldorf at the end of November 2022. Here, the group began to engage in a comparative exchange on specific differences and similarities between the arbitration practices and traditions of the Netherlands and of Germany. It was quickly clear that there was much to add to such comparison and that such exchange should thus be continued in follow-up group meetings with a view to deepening the group members’ understanding and knowledge of both countries arbitration practices.
The group further agreed that it would then want to take its insights and experiences in the Dutch and German dispute resolution practices out to the interested public in future events. Those events shall address both the respective dispute resolution professionals, but also the general business communities of both countries as the potential users of dispute resolution procedures in the neighbouring country. They shall aim at helping to better understand what it means to arbitrate commercial disputes in the respective other of the two countries and to make the undertaking of such an arbitration procedure on the “foreign turf” more familiar and less adventurous.
The group will shortly meet again to follow up on its ideas created in the inaugural meeting and to devise and announce first events.
Andreas Hacke