I have the honour to speak on behalf of the Nordic countries Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway. Let me start by congratulating Mr Soo-Geun Oh on his election as Chairman of UNCITRAL, and we want to express our appreciation for his very interesting report provided to our Committee here today.
We welcome the report of UNCITRAL on the work of its forty-second session. As stated on many occasions, our countries highly appreciate the coordination efforts undertaken by the Commission in order to maintain close cooperation with other international organs and organizations active in the field of international trade law.
Norway has participated actively in the working groups established by the Commission. These working groups perform the substantive preparatory work on topics within the Commission’s work programme. We are pleased that the activities of these working groups are characterized by open and inspiring discussions among its members. We continue to believe that these characteristics contribute to the working groups’ excellent results. At the same time, our countries continue to take due note of the discussion of the working methods of UNCITRAL.
During this year’s session, the Commission adopted the Practice Guide on Cross-Border Insolvency Cooperation. It is our view that the Practice Guide will be useful for practitioners and judges, as well as creditors and other stakeholders in insolvency proceedings.
Working Group I (Procurement) is currently revising the Model Law on Procurement of Goods, Construction and Services with Guide to Enactment, to ensure that the Model Law and its Guide reflect new practices, in particular those resulting from the use of electronic communications in public procurement. We note the steps taken forward with a view to completing the revision of the Model Law and its Guide during the forty-second session of the Commission.
We strongly support the ongoing work of Working Group II (Arbitration and Conciliation) to revise the Arbitration Rules of 1976, which is expected to be concluded at the fifty-second session of Working Group II in February 2010. Norway has participated actively in the revision, as well as in the Secretariat’s gathering of information relating to connected matters, such as the implementation of the New York Convention of 1958 on recognition and enforcement of foreign arbitral awards and the question of transparency in treaty-based investor-State arbitration.
We welcome the progress made by Working Group V (Insolvency Law) on the important issue of treatment of corporate groups in insolvency. We note the decision of the Working Group to include the agreed text from the work on enterprise groups as part III of the UNCITRAL Legislative Guide on Insolvency Law. In this regard, we look forward to the discussions in relation to the accompanying commentaries to both the domestic and international recommendations.
During its fortieth session the Commission finalized and adopted the UNCITRAL Legislative Guide on Secured Transactions, based on the understanding that an annex to the Legislative Guide would be prepared as soon as possible. We note with satisfaction the progress made by Working Group IV (Security Interests) on the annex to the Legislative Guide.
Mr Chairman,
The Convention on Contracts for the International Carriage of Goods Wholly or Partly by Sea was adopted and opened for signature by the General Assembly last year. We would like to take this opportunity to congratulate and commend both UNCITRAL and the Netherlands on the well-organised signing ceremony that took place on 23rd September this year and on the related activities the days before the ceremony. Denmark and Norway were among the 16 states that signed the Rotterdam Rules.
We extend our thanks to the Commission and its secretariat for their hard effort to further elaborate international trade law and we are eagerly looking forward to continuing our participation in this work.