The anniversary symposium of the International Commercial Chamber of the Paris Court of Appeal, 5 years on, which I had the privilege of closing, demonstrated the extent to which this body, both at the Court of Appeal and at the Paris Commercial Court level, has responded to the internationalization of commercial disputes, including arbitration (the Court of Appeal is responsible for hearing appeals against arbitration rulings).
Already, with the ICC Court of Arbitration, Paris is a central place for the resolution of such disputes.
With the International Commercial Chambers, France is now also playing a leading role in this field, to such an extent that the formula is being adopted by a growing number of countries: the Netherlands, soon Germany, perhaps Ireland, Switzerland, and others.
The symposium was fascinating, and the presentations were of a very high standard.
The main conclusions are twofold:
- Firstly, it is remarkable that these international chambers, where English and other languages are used, and where the procedure includes innumerable improvements, notably in terms of oral evidence, revalorizing hearings as a forum for dialogue between the parties and with the judges, have been set up on the basis of unchanged law, testifying, if proof were needed, to the richness of French civil procedure.
- Secondly, it is urgent to confirm the undeniable success of the initiative, and to do so, a law must enshrine the existence of these chambers by granting them national jurisdiction. The fact that they are not courts in their own right is no reason to postpone this reform, which is essential if we really want to strengthen France's attractiveness through law.
So let's follow in the footsteps of Henri Motulsky, who perfectly anticipated the evolution of the judiciary and its necessary openness to the diversity of standards, whether international, European or national, with a strong emphasis on the issue of conflict of laws and comparative law!
Jacques Boulard, Rémi Decourt-Paolini, Chantal Arens, Daniel Barlow, Soraya Amrani Mekki, Olivier Brossollet, Laure Aldebert, Sandrine Clavel, Philippe Pinsolle, François Vaissette, Fabienne Schaller, Gilles Cuniberti, Sandrine Giroud, Julie Heisserer, Brigitte Brun-Lallemand, François Ancel, Joanna Ghorayeb, Jacques Bouyssou.
