HUNGARY Law and Practice Contributed by: Tamás Éless, Sarolta Édua Szabó, Ulrike Rein and Zsolt Farkas, Oppenheim Law Firm
In cases relating to the recognition and enforcement of arbitral awards or interim measures rendered by the arbitral tribunal, and to the assistance provided by the courts to the evidentiary procedure, the com - petent court is determined by the general Hungarian procedural rules on competence and national jurisdic - tion (such as the Civil Procedure Code and the Act on Judicial Enforcement).
which has exclusive competence in all domestic insti - tutional arbitration cases seated in Hungary, except for legal disputes relating to sports and agricultural matters. In order to maintain the enforceability of arbitration clauses, the Act provides that the arbitra - tion agreement shall be regarded as a provision for the jurisdiction of the Commercial Arbitration Court if the competence of the abolished arbitration courts was stipulated in an arbitration agreement concluded before 1 January 2018. The rather unfortunate wording of the original version of Section 1 (1) of the Act defining the territorial scope of application was corrected in August 2018; it is now clear that the Act applies in all cases where the seat of arbitration is in Hungary. However, the extraterritorial effect of certain provisions of the Act (such as Sec - tions 9–10 on the role of courts in case of a dispute subject to an arbitration agreement; Sections 26–28 on the enforcement of interim measures rendered by the arbitral tribunal; Section 40 on court assistance in the taking of evidence; and Sections 53–54 on the enforcement of arbitral awards) are confined to institutional arbitral proceedings where the seat of arbitration is outside of Hungary but the proceeding is administered by a Hungarian permanent court of arbitration. The validity and enforceability of an arbitration agree - ment are governed by Section 8 of the Hungarian Arbitration Act. As a requirement regarding the content of an arbitra - tion agreement, the Act stipulates that the arbitration agreement must define the (contractual or non-con - tractual) legal relationship of the parties out of which disputes might arise in the future, or out of which a specified dispute which they wish to arbitrate has already arisen. 3. The Arbitration Agreement 3.1 Enforceability As a formal requirement, an arbitration agreement – which can be a separate agreement or a clause forming part of the main contract – shall be in writing.
2. Governing Legislation 2.1 Governing Law
The national legislation governing international arbi - tration in Hungary is Act LX of 2017 on Arbitration (the Hungarian Arbitration Act, or “the Act”), which is based on the 1985 UNCITRAL Model Law on Inter - national Commercial Arbitration (“Model Law”), as amended in 2006. The Act expressly stipulates that it shall be interpreted subject to the explanations given in the 2006 version of the Model Law (Section 3 (3)). However, the Hungarian Arbitration Act diverges from the Model Law in a few significant aspects. The Act regulates domestic and international arbitrations in a uniform manner; under the Act, the extraterritorial effect of the provisions listed in Article 1 (2) of the Model Law is confined to arbitral proceedings seated abroad but administered by a Hungarian permanent court of arbitration. Another divergence is the intro - duction of the possibility of retrial proceedings as a special legal remedy against arbitral awards. 2.2 Changes to National Law The Hungarian Arbitration Act was passed by the Hungarian Parliament in 2017 and entered into force on 1 January 2018. While the previous Hungarian Arbi - tration Act (Act LXXI of 1994) was based on the 1985 version of the Model Law, the new Act mirrors the 2006 version of the Model Law. In addition, the new Act abolished two of the for - mer permanent courts of arbitration (the Permanent Court of Arbitration for Money and Capital Markets, and the Permanent Court of Arbitration for Energy) and established a new permanent court of arbitra - tion (the Commercial Arbitration Court, attached to the Hungarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry),
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