At the 2025 edition of the Paris Arbitration Week, the French Minister of Justice announced a reform of arbitration law based on the work of a group co-chaired by François Ancel (adviser to the French Court of Cassation) and Professor Thomas Clay (University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, arbitrator).
Nearly six months after that announcement, nothing concrete seems to have appeared yet on practitioners’ radar.
And yet the report sets out 40 proposals, including the creation of a French Arbitration Code (Code de l’arbitrage).
So does this reform project deserve to be pushed further? The analysis below offers some answers, in light of the report’s objectives, market dynamics and legal considerations.
Context and objectives of the Ancel/Clay report
The working group, set up on 12 November 2024 by the French Minister of Justice, Didier Migaud, was tasked with modernizing French arbitration law, which has not been changed since the previous reform in 2011 (Decree No. 2011-48).
Delivered within four months, the report reflects a desire to act quickly to shore up Paris’s position as a major seat of international arbitration in competition with London, Singapore and Hong Kong. According to the report’s preamble, the aim was not only to codify the doctrinal and case-law developments that have occurred since the 2011 reform, but also to “look to the future” by strengthening the autonomy, flexibility and efficiency of French arbitration law.
The short timetable underlined both the political urgency and the confidence placed in the group’s expertise, which brought together leading practitioners, academics and judges. The report’s presentation at Paris Arbitration Week 2025 further signaled an ambition to align the French model with prevailing international arbitration practices while consolidating Paris’s attractiveness. That said, the stalemate observed since April 2025 raises questions about political or practical obstacles slowing the reform down.
A measure at the heart of the reform: creating a dedicated Arbitration Code
The report’s central proposal is clearly the creation of a French Arbitration Code (Code de l’arbitrage) that would gather provisions currently scattered across numerous codes, chiefly Articles 1442 to 1527 of the French Code of Civil Procedure. This “turnkey” draft code, consisting of 146 articles, is thus intended to unify the domestic and international arbitration regimes and to enshrine arbitration as an autonomous legal discipline.
Several advantages are worth underlining:
- Stronger autonomy: A standalone code would symbolically and structurally strengthen arbitration law by detaching its procedural regime from the general rules of civil procedure. This fits within a French tradition of supporting arbitration as an alternative dispute-resolution method.
- Unification of regimes: Harmonizing the rules applicable to domestic and international arbitration could remove certain inconsistencies – such as differing requirements for arbitration agreements under Articles 1442 and 1507 of the CPC – and would offer better predictability for practitioners and parties.
- Boosting Paris’s attractiveness: A modern, unified code would reinforce Paris’s appeal vis-à-vis competitors like London and Singapore. Paris already benefits from a robust arbitration ecosystem (hosting, among other things, the seat of the International Chamber of Commerce and the annual Paris Arbitration Week), and codification could attract more international disputes.
- Greater readability: Grouping scattered provisions into a single code would improve accessibility for foreign parties and practitioners who are often unfamiliar with the French legal system.
Creating an Arbitration Code also raises several challenges:
- Complex implementation: Drafting and adopting a new code requires extensive consultation, which may provoke resistance from actors accustomed to the current framework provided by the Code of Civil Procedure, itself generally well-regarded.
- Practitioner resistance: Some arbitrators and counsel might prefer the current system’s flexibility, in which developments through case law (for example, French Court of Cassation decisions on annulment grounds) provide a degree of adaptability.
- Need for international coordination: Any future code will need to respect international standards (for instance, the UNCITRAL Model Law and the New York Convention) to avoid isolating French arbitration from international practice.
This codification proposal appears ambitious but achievable, provided a balance is preserved between autonomy and compatibility with existing international frameworks and with the French Code of Civil Procedure.
“Structuring” and “substantive” proposals
The report sets out nine so-called “structuring” proposals and thirty “substantive” proposals, grouped into three categories: promoting arbitration that is (1) more flexible, (2) more protective, and (3) more efficient.
While it is not possible here to analyze all 40 proposals, some may be highlighted.
Structuring proposals :
- Unification of domestic and international arbitration: The goal is to remove distinctions between the two regimes to create a coherent framework that reduces complexity, particularly in cross-border disputes.
- Reforming the role of state judges: The reform also aims to simplify the role of French courts in supporting arbitration (for example, regarding provisional measures or enforcement) and to limit the grounds for annulment in order to strengthen the finality of awards.
- Autonomous principles: The draft proposes to enshrine guiding principles specific to arbitration (notably party autonomy and procedural fairness) that would form the foundation of the new code.
Substantive proposals :
- More flexibility: To this end, the reform proposes, among other things, simplifying formal and substantive requirements for arbitration agreements to make arbitration more accessible, especially for lower-value disputes.
- More protection: The project strengthens safeguards against arbitrator conflicts of interest and promotes transparency in institutional arbitration, including adherence to ICC rules where relevant.
- More efficiency: The reform introduces mechanisms to speed up proceedings – such as timeframes for issuing awards and simplified procedures for small claims – so France can compete with seats seen as faster, such as Singapore.
These measures aim to respond to contemporary challenges – chief among them the need for procedural speed and transparency – while consolidating French case law that is favorable to arbitration.
Current state and post-report inaction
Despite the report’s submission in March 2025 and the official announcement in April, no draft legislation has been released to date. Several factors may explain this inactivity.
First, the political instability the country has experienced in recent months has likely slowed the reform momentum. Moreover, current priorities appear to focus on other civil matters (notably court backlogs) and, above all, on criminal law.
Additionally, the scope of the report – especially the proposal to create an Arbitration Code – requires broad stakeholder consultation (bar associations, the International Chamber of Commerce, judges, etc.). The stated objective of reaching a “consensus bloc” by autumn 2025 suggests that debates are still ongoing.
Some practitioners indeed consider codification superfluous given the strength of existing case law, while others believe certain proposals pose risks.
Points of controversy
The reform has generated numerous proposals, some of which have attracted particular attention.
The report notably recommends unifying domestic and international arbitration while redefining “international arbitration,” which would no longer be tied to the “interests of international trade” (Art. 1504 of the French Code of Civil Procedure) but to “international economic interests.” The precise outline of this new definition remain unclear and could themselves become a source of litigation.
By nature, international arbitration is intended for cross-border disputes, often complex and involving parties subject to different legal systems. The reform appears to want to extend the traditionally liberal rules of international arbitration to domestic arbitration.
That could, for example, allow two French companies in a purely national dispute to enjoy the same degree of freedom as two multinationals engaged in a cross-border transaction worth hundreds of millions of euros. Such an assimilation could undermine certain safeguards provided in domestic arbitration – such as the possibility for parties to choose appeal as a remedy against an award (Article 1489 of the French Code of Civil Procedure).
Moreover, the proposed elimination of the residual jurisdiction of the President of the tribunal de commerce as the supporting judge (juge d’appui) for arbitral tribunals has provoked strong reactions.
Under Article 1459 of the French Code of Civil Procedure, the supporting judge is, in principle, the President of the tribunal judiciaire, with an exception allowing the parties to designate the President of the tribunal de commerce – except where the judge is asked to rule on challenges to arbitrators. The report recommends removing this residual competence, calling it “obsolete,” and argues that the supporting judge should be specialized.
Reactions were swift. Patrick Sayer, President of the Paris Tribunal for Economic Affairs (Tribunal des affaires économiques), in particular considered this proposal contrary to both the historical foundations and the conventional spirit of arbitration. He also noted that it seems to run counter to the recent creation of the tribunals for economic activities, whose jurisdiction has been broadened (P. Sayer, “Les tribunaux de commerce, juges d’appui en matière d’arbitrage : être ou ne pas être?”, La Semaine juridique, 19 May 2025, No. 20, p. 867).
Finally, a less conspicuous proposal deserves comment. In the name of greater efficiency, the draft reform recommends establishing an autonomous procedural regime before the Court of Appeal.
For context, annulment proceedings in both domestic and international arbitration are currently subject to the rules governing contentious procedure set out in Articles 900 to 930-1 of the French Code of Civil Procedure.
The working group noted two limits to this arrangement:
- Arbitration law remains dependent on reforms to the appellate procedure, which are not always designed with arbitration’s specificities in mind; and
- Cross-references to contentious procedure provisions reduce textual clarity and make the law harder to access for those unfamiliar with the French Code of Civil Procedure.
These observations could justify creating a procedural regime specific to arbitration. Nevertheless, one point warrants attention.
Article 92 of the draft Arbitration Code proposes imposing a mandatory procedural timetable set by the Pre-Trial judge (Conseiller de la mise en état), which would provide parties with visibility on the deadline for the completion of pleadings, oral argument and the delivery of the decision.
If parties fail to comply with this timetable without legitimate reason, the report recommends effective sanctions, “such as a civil fine of an amount significant and proportionate to the nature of the dispute”, without specifying the precise amount (page 70 of the report).
A reading of Article 92 highlights a little-discussed proposal that deserves debate. While the text would retain the sanction of caducité (lapse/dismissal) of the appeal for the claimant who fails to file submissions within the three-month period currently provided by Article 908 of the Code of Civil Procedure, it would remove the sanction of irrecevabilité (inadmissibility) applicable to a defendant who fails to submit pleadings within three months of notification of the claimant’s submissions, replacing that sanction with a fine.
It seems that replacing the sanction of inadmissibility with a mere fine risks weakening procedural effectiveness. Whereas inadmissibility strongly encouraged a defendant to file pleadings within the allotted time, a fine appears less dissuasive and may encourage dilatory tactics, especially for defendants with substantial financial resources.
This could ultimately lengthen proceedings and undermine the speed that is one of arbitration’s main advantages. Moreover, the asymmetry between claimant and defendant remedies could be perceived as procedural imbalance, a source of legal uncertainty and potential challenges.
Meanwhile in London: the Arbitration Act 2025
Across the Channel, the Arbitration Act 2025 came into force on 1 August 2025 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Notably, arbitration law there had not undergone major reform since 1996, making modernization necessary. The Arbitration Act 2025 expresses a clear intent to consolidate London’s role as a leading arbitration seat.
Among the innovations the English reform introduces is an accelerated arbitration procedure that allows an arbitrator to issue a summary disposal – rendering a summary award without deciding the merits of the case – if it appears that a claim (or a defense to a claim) has no “real prospect of success”.
Paris and London thus seem to be evolving in parallel: each seat is adjusting its legal framework to meet international standards and attract international arbitrations. France could draw on these developments and benefit from the English experience in designing a coherent, modern and competitive Arbitration Code.
The two reform projects converge, in particular, on the desire to strengthen transparency in arbitration. The duty to disclose by arbitrators has been extended on the English side: arbitrators must now disclose not only circumstances of which they are aware but also those they ought reasonably to have been aware of.
In France, this trend is reflected in a proposal to enhance transparency in judicial appointments of arbitrators by requiring an annual publication of the list of arbitrators appointed by each court. By contrast, the disclosure obligation currently set out in Article 1456 of the Code of Civil Procedure would be reproduced verbatim in the new Article 35 of the proposed Arbitration Code.
One provision in the Arbitration Act 2025 departs from the French model: Article 1 there provides that, in the absence of an agreement by the parties on the law governing the arbitration agreement, the law of the seat of the arbitration should apply.
Since the Dalico decision of 1993, French arbitration law has, by contrast, upheld the autonomy of the arbitration clause: the law applicable to the clause is to be determined according to the parties’ common intention, without recourse to a particular national law. The Ancel/Clay report recommends safeguarding this foundational principle of France’s attractiveness by formally enshrining it as a guiding principle of French arbitration law.
Recommendations and outlook
Reforming French arbitration law could preserve Paris’s position as a leading arbitration seat – provided the process is thoughtful and inclusive.
Creating an Arbitration Code is an attractive proposal because it would strengthen the clarity and autonomy of arbitration rules, in keeping with a French tradition of supporting arbitration. However, its success will depend on taking stakeholders’ concerns into account and aligning the code with international standards.
Some priorities could guide the reform in the months ahead to make it both effective and realistic.
Targeted codification should be central: the aim would be to consolidate core arbitration provisions in a single code, focusing on key areas such as arbitration agreements and enforcement of awards. This would structure the subject matter without overburdening existing rules, and make the framework more accessible to practitioners.
Gradual harmonization of domestic and international regimes should be pursued. The process could start with procedural aspects – such as the grounds for annulment under Articles 1492 and 1520 of the CPC – to ensure a smooth transition to the new code.
Efficiency and transparency must be at the heart of the reform. This includes implementing accelerated procedures and disclosure obligations for arbitrators, in order to align French practice with international standards. These measures should strengthen confidence in arbitration and improve Paris’s competitiveness as an arbitration seat.
Broad consultation with sector stakeholders is also essential. Practitioners, arbitral institutions and foreign actors should be involved in the reform process to build a strong consensus and address controversies raised, particularly during Paris Arbitration Week. This collaborative approach could facilitate the code’s adoption and acceptance within the arbitration community.
In that respect, the goal of achieving a “consensus bloc” by autumn 2025 now looks ambitious and arguably unrealistic. A more realistic timetable might be:
- 2026: finalize consultations and draft any adjustments to the proposed Arbitration Code.
- Autumn 2027: final adoption of the Arbitration Code.
To conclude: inaction is a real risk for France, which could lose ground to its competitors. Whatever becomes of the Ancel/Clay report’s proposals, Paris must consolidate its leading position by offering a modern, unified framework for arbitration procedures.
