EGYPT Trends and Developments Contributed by: Samer Badran, Abdelrahman Mahdy, Abd El-Rahman Taha and Nancy Ashour, Badran Law Firm
Badran Law Firm 76, Jaami’aat al-Duwal al-Arabiyyah, Muhandissin, Egypt
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Introduction Despite the relatively rapid court rulings issued by the Economic Courts, arbitration and ADR mecha - nisms are the number one competitor in Egypt. They are no longer seen as an alternative process to litiga - tion; rather, they have become deliberate instruments of economic and institutional policy. Several parallel developments across the past several years illustrate this shift, each addressing a different point in Egypt’s dispute resolution landscape: • The first is Egypt’s cautious embrace of media - tion, marked by its signature in January 2026 of the Singapore Convention on Mediation, even as the absence of a standalone domestic mediation law leaves that embrace symbolic rather than binding for the time being. • The second is the continued insistence, reaffirmed by the Court of Cassation (November 2021) and more recently by the Cairo Economic Court (Feb - ruary 2026), that disputes arising from know-how transfer agreements performed in Egypt (including franchise agreements) shall be resolved accord - ing to Egyptian substantive law. Parties to these agreements are thus unable to choose a different substantive law to be applicable to their agree - ment, and arbitration clauses embedded in these agreements shall only refer to Egyptian law as the applicable law. • The third is the rise of sector-specific arbitral insti - tutions such as the Egyptian Center for Arbitration and Settlement of Non-Banking Financial Disputes (ECAS), established not as a general alternative to the Cairo Regional Centre for International Com - mercial Arbitration (CRCICA) but as a targeted
response to Egypt’s fast-evolving non-banking financial markets, with recent regulatory decrees actively channelling fintech disputes into its juris - diction. • The fourth is the new Labour Law’s calibrated opening of collective labour disputes to arbitration, while preserving the exclusive jurisdiction of the labour courts over individual disputes. Taken together, these developments suggest that Egypt’s arbitration and ADR framework is not pro - ceeding along a single track but advancing unevenly: with confidence where the state’s institutional inter - ests are engaged, but cautiously where the legislature lacks the ambition. 1. Mediation – Singapore Convention Since the New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards entered into force in 1959, arbitration has enjoyed a unified global enforcement tool. Mediation, by contrast, has only gained comparable international recognition recently, despite its growing use in both international relations and domestic business practice as an alter - native to litigation. Being neither binding nor adjudica - tive, mediation relies on its consensual and facilitative characteristics, making it a comfort zone for parties to a dispute. This growing reliance on mediation made it necessary to develop a tool that would provide a unified and effective framework for the enforcement of international settlement agreements resulting from mediation, notably, the United Nations Convention on International Settlement Agreements Resulting from Mediation, also known as the “Singapore Convention on Mediation”, which reflects a broader recognition of
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