In February 2023, the bilateral Italian-German arbitration group commenced its activities with a first virtual get-to-know meeting.
The stated goal of the group is to create a permanent and open forum to foster in a concerted fashion deeper links between the Italian and German arbitration communities by teaming up four leading arbitration organizations in a joint project - Associazione Italiana per l’Arbitrato (AIA), the Italian Forum for Arbitration and ADR (ArbIt), the Chamber of Arbitration Milan (CAM) and the German Arbitration Institute (DIS).
The group plans to achieve this goal through various activities, including the building of a network of German-Italian lawyers, academics, members of the judiciary, experts, forensic accountants, translators and court reporters working in the field of arbitration, and the organisation of conferences, workshops and side-events in Italy and Germany
The core group currently is co-chaired by Cecilia Carrara of Legance Avvocati Associati and Gustav Flecke-Giammarco of Seven Summits Arbitration. It comprises nine further arbitration practitioners from Italy and Germany, namely Prof. Luigi Fumagalli of Università degli Studi di Milano - La Statale, Marco Padovan of Studio Legale Padovan, Patricia Nacimiento of Herbert Smith Freehills, Silja Schaffstein of Lévy Kaufmann-Kohler, Karl von Hase of Pluta, Michele Sabatini of Studio Legale ArbLit, Wolfram Buchwitz of Universität Würzburg, Maria Theresia Roerig Corsini of BDC Studio Legale and Jan-Michael Ahrens of Siemens.
The members of the core group are currently organising their first official event – the group’s “kick off” meeting - which will take place in person in Milan on 5 July 2023, thus directly following the Italian Arbitration Day. For this occasion, the group has invited Christoph Liebscher (Liebscher Dispute Resolution), Francesca Salerno (Head of Group Significant Litigations, ENEL S.p.A.), Ramona Schardt (Secretary General of the DIS), Franz T. Schwarz (Vice-President of VIAC) and Alessandro Covi (Herbert Smith Freehills) to discuss the topic “Management techniques and team-work approach in arbitration”.
Silja Schaffstein