ArbDB Members Involved In Developments In Investor-State (I-S) Mediation

ArbDB Members, Wolf von Kumberg, Mark Appel, Paul Rose and Michael Cover, have all been involved in recent developments in I-S Mediation. This is against the background a certain questioning of the continued effectiveness of I-S Arbitration, not least its cost. Perhaps rather counter-intuitively, the interest in I-S Mediation is being led by states rather than investors.

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Wolf von Kumberg, Mark Appel and Michael Cover are all Members of a task force of the International Mediation Institute (IMI), based in the Hague, the Netherlands. This is the IMI Investor-State Mediation Task Force, of which Mark is the Chair. The objectives of this Task Force are, amongst other things, to assist parties in finding competent and suitable mediators for I-S disputes, ensure a designating authority if parties cannot agree one, to enable creative use of hybrid dispute resolution processes, such as dispute boards and to develop I-S Mediation Competency Criteria. This has led to the promulgation by the Task Force on behalf of IMI of The IMI I-S Mediator Competency Criteria. The Task Force is also assisting the EU Commission on the use of mediation to resolve intra-EU investor-state disput

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Mark and Wolf also led the first Training for Mediators in I-S Disputes, held at ICSID in Washington, DC, USA in September 2017. The intention is to run this course again in Europe and Singapore in 2018, as well as a conference at the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) in Abu Dhabi. Mark and Wolf are working with the Energy Charter Secretariat, ICSID, the ICC and the International Mediation Institute on this. In addition, Mark has co-authored an article "I-S Mediation; Not Whether or Even When but How".

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Wolf and Michael have been involved in working with the Energy Charter Secretariat in Brussels on the development and promulgation of a document entitled "The Energy Charter Treaty and ADR in the Context of I-S and other Disputes" and authored an article in 2016 on the same subject.