SAMK´s Peter Sandell has been elected to the Board of Directors of Nordic Offshore and Maritime Arbitration Association

Peter Sandell

– Shipping and offshore industry are important employers in Finland and Finnish legal experts in this field need to get involved in developing shipping regulation and serve the industry also in order to facilitate the dispute resolution system to be more speedy and cost efficient, says Sandell.

In contracts relating to shipping and offshore industry, the parties to the contracts usually choose arbitration for their dispute resolution method so that the possible disagreements can be solved quickly.

– The parties often feel that the normal civil court procedure with appeals from Circuit Courts to higher courts is too slow for solving commercial shipping and offshore disputes, says Sandell, who has previously worked also as a deputy Circuit Court judge in Turku.

The responsibility for focusing on NOMA arbitration rules has been assigned to the Board of Directors. Sandell considers the work interesting and challenging so that NOMA can compete more efficiently in the future also for dispute resolution in wider international spectrum and not just about those where parties – or one of them – is from Nordic countries. The largest part of maritime arbitrations is nowadays solved in London maritime arbitration. However, Brexit might have influence on this in the future.

In order to provide efficient methods for dispute resolution and to be able to offer a cost efficient Nordic alternative for London arbitration, NOMAs´Board of directors is focusing on development of the Association´s Rules and Best Practice. Also creation a ”small claim procedure” and a ”fast track” option are on the agenda. Mediation has also become more and more popular in shipping and offshore industry, says Sandell.

”NOMA will be a success”

Sandell has been working in many different assignments developing shipping rules and regulations during the 2010´s: In United Nations shipping organization IMO:s Legal Committee´s meeting as legal expert in finnish national delegation 2013–2018 and in Comité Maritime International CMI´s International Working Group on General Average 2012–2016. CMI IWG created a whole new set of rules for General Average (YAR 2016), which will be applied in international trade worldwide for decades to come. These rules are an important part of the risk division system in world trade.

– Rules on General Average have been a success and NOMA will also be a success story, says Sandell.

– The NOMA´s Nordic Arbitration clause has already been incorporated into a number of standard contracts.

NOMA was established 2017 by the initiative of Nordic Maritime Law Associations. In the Board of Directors there is three members from both Denmark and Norway, and two from both Finland and Sweden. The Board of Directors names the arbitrators for each arbitration.

Master degree is SAMK´s export product

Sandell has worked in SAMK since 2003 as responsible for development and implementation of the Master of Maritime Management degree program. Master degree has become an international export product for SAMK. “In future we are doing even more intensive work with the members of IAMU (international Association of Maritime Universities) to make the degree program even more international”, Sandell says. “Already now we are producing parts of the degree program in Copenhagen and London”