Out-of-Court Dispute Settlement in the Energy Sector

20 February 2015

A joint initiative of the FSR and the EUI Law Department

As a joint initiative, the Florence School of Regulation and the ERC-funded project on European Private Regulatory Law Project (EUI Law Department) are organising a workshop on out-of-court dispute resolution mechanisms in the energy sector. The workshop will focus on different types of Alternative Dispute Resolutions (ADRs) schemes, implemented in EU Member States to resolve conflicts and disputes between private parties who participate in energy markets.

A comparison of out-of-court settlements in different jurisdictions

The purpose of the workshop is to examine the varieties of institutional arrangements implemented in different jurisdictions (such as administrative dispute resolution, ombudsman schemes, online dispute resolution, arbitration, mediation), the reasons for their adoption, as well as how the institutional design is matched onto the types of problems (business-to-business or business-to-customer) as well as the sources of normativity used to resolve disputes. At the conceptual level, the workshop will examine the value added of such ADR schemes in the energy sector as it compares both to traditional private party dispute settlement in courts and to the use of out-of-court mechanisms in other sectors of the economy.

Input from a wide range of practitioners

The principal input in the workshop will be from practitioners who are involved in different types of dispute settlement, including legal practitioners, industry representatives, regulators, consumer organisations and others. Prominent academics working in the field of energy regulation will also be invited to stimulate the joint discussion.