Arbitrability of disputes in Polish law

Abstract

This article presents the issue of arbitrability of disputes from the perspective of Polish law. The arbitrability of disputes is defined as the admissibility of submitting a given dispute to an arbitration court. In Polish law, arbitrability of disputes is governed by Article 1157 Code of Civil Procedure, which was significantly amended in September 2019. The scope of arbitrability of disputes in Polish law has been analysed referring to the category of cases that may be resolved in arbitration proceedings, as well as cases which are not capable of arbitration, and therefore cannot be subject to examination by arbitration courts. This article also refers to the effects of the amendment to the provision of Article 1157 of the Code of Civil Procedure and contains a positive assessment of the amendment from a comparative legal perspective, indicating that it made it possible to clarify the application of the conciliation criterion only to disputes over non-pecuniary rights. It was emphasized that basing arbitrability of disputes on the criterion of conciliatory compliance, bearing in mind and comparing this structure to the structure of unlimited arbitrability of property-related disputes, seems ineffective due to the imprecise shape of the concept of conciliation.