MALTA Law and Practice Contributed by: Antoine Cremona, Louis Cassar Pullicino, Clement Mifsud-Bonnici and Yasmine Ellul, Ganado Advocates
Ganado Advocates 171 Old Bakery Street VLT 1455 Valletta Malta Tel: +356 2123 5406 Email: lawfirm@ganado.com Web: www.ganado.com
1. General 1.1 Prevalence of Arbitration
outliers, the jurisdiction is generally supportive of arbi - tration, and the courts have, and regularly exercise, extensive powers of support (including interim relief) for both domestic and international arbitrations having their seat in Malta. On a purely domestic level, litigation has tradition - ally been the method of choice amongst local market players, owing largely to the comparatively low cost of court proceedings in Malta. That said, domestic arbitration is on a clear upward trajectory, with par - ties increasingly recognising the advantages of speed, confidentiality and procedural flexibility that arbitration offers over traditional litigation. 1.2 Key Industries The use of arbitration in Malta has been increasing steadily. The construction industry, in particular, has seen a significant rise in arbitration activity, driven by the growing number of large-scale infrastructure pro - jects and the fact that the International Federation of Consulting Engineers (FIDIC) contracts have become the prevalent form of construction contract in Malta for medium-to-large-scale developments. This is increas - ingly the case also in publicly funded infrastructure projects. As a result, a substantial number of con - struction claims are now referred to arbitration. Arbi - tration clauses are also increasingly being incorporat - ed in contracts awarded through public procurement processes, a clear signal to the market of the prefer - ence of public authorities for disputes to be resolved by arbitration. Moreover, there has been a marked increase in arbitrations concerning areas which were hitherto the exclusive domain of the Maltese courts, including shareholder disputes and certain intellectual
Arbitration is a well-established and widely embraced method of dispute resolution in Malta for both general and sector-specific commercial disputes. It is particu - larly prevalent in sectors such as construction, mari - time and information technology, where domestic par - ties engaged in international contracts routinely opt for institutional or ad hoc international arbitration as their preferred method of dispute resolution. Arbitra - tion clauses feature regularly across a broad range of other industries, and institutional arbitration clauses are increasingly featured in commercial contracts governed by Maltese law or involving a Malta-based entity. Recent years have witnessed a marked and sustained uptake in the use of international arbitration in rela - tion to contracts involving public and private entities, as well as in the shipping, insurance, mergers and acquisitions, gaming, and financial services sectors – a trend which reflects Malta’s growing prominence as an international commercial hub. Factors such as Malta’s strategic geographical location, its robust and arbitration-friendly legal framework, and its highly competitive cost-to-quality ratio continue to attract parties to arbitration, both as a contractual choice and as a seat. The principal advantages of arbitration in Malta are the flexibility of procedure and the value added by expe - rienced arbitrators, as well as the relative ease of the enforceability of awards. With some notable excep - tions in court judgments that are widely regarded as
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