Publisher’s note

Welcome to The European Arbitration Review 2025, one of Global Arbitration Review’s annual special reports.

Global Arbitration Review, for anyone unfamiliar, is the online home for international arbitration specialists. We tell them all they need to know about everything that matters in their professional niche.

Throughout the year, we give our readers pitch-perfect news (please do sign up for the email on our homepage), regular surveys and features; convene the liveliest events (under our GAR Live banner); and curate various time-saving databases and know-how sections, including the only arbitrator research tool built on real, behind-the-scenes research, now tied to our database of arbitral awards.

In addition, assisted by external contributors, we curate a set of on-line regional reviews that go deeper into local developments than the exigencies of journalism allow. The European Arbitration Review, which you are reading, is one.

It contains insight and wisdom inspired by recent events in the region from numerous pre-eminent practitioners. The sum of those parts is usually a volume that is part rear-view mirror, part helpful primer and part crystal ball – and always 100 per cent useful. The 2025 edition is no exception. All contributors have been vetted for their standing and knowledge before being invited to take part. 

In this edition, we have chapters on Spain, Sweden and Türkiye, as well as three thematic overviews: one on how AI will almost certainly ramify in disputes of different types; one on corporations and human rights; and one on damages in transport infrastructure disputes (what is the loss in terms of lost traffic, tax and impact on the wider economy when, say, the construction of a new airport hits serious delay? It’s far from straightforward).  

A close read of these reviews always yields many gems. On this occasion, for this reader, they included that:

• there’s no investor-state dispute settlement case on whether data alone can be a protected investment (and the one case that looked set to decide the point probably would not);
• if a government is the main owner of an airport that hits delay – what is the hit to the wider economy and can that damage be quantified?;
• a new EU directive makes it far more likely that human rights questions will appear in ‘ordinary’ contract disputes – so skill up ordinary, commercial arbitrators!;
• Sweden has had an arbitration law since 1734; and 
• Madrid’s international arbitration centre – MIAC – has developed a procedure I had no idea about but have been advocating for a while now, where the anxiety of faster arbitration is reduced by giving an appeal to a second tribunal (the Challenge Tribunal). See the chapter on Spain for more.

And that is just the start. I hope you enjoy the review as much as I did. My sincere thanks go out to all the authors. If you have any suggestions for the next edition, or wish to participate, we’d love to hear from you. Please write to [email protected].

David Samuels
Publisher, Global Arbitration Review
September 2024