Partner Perspectives: Stavros Pavlou

Can you provide an overview of your law firm’s Dispute Resolution practice within the broader region? What notable strengths characterize your team of attorneys in this extended context?

Our office traditionally has been a dispute resolution office. It was founded 60 years ago by my father, and being a barrister, he started, especially with dispute resolution. We have developed our department of litigation and a DR extensively, and we have experience in cross border disputes either in arbitration or litigation.

So what differentiates us is our ability to take on more than one project at a time. We are able to produce several teams at the same time under experienced partners. We have handled a lot of disputes in our 60 years. So we have the experience to find solutions that others would have to think of anew, whereas we know what we’re doing.

We have an excellent blend of experience in youth. There are the more experienced partners who have been with the firm for decades. But we also have young lawyers and young senior lawyers in dispute resolution who augment the team and are able to give us different angles of approach that best serve the client.

As a highly regarded professional in the region in dispute resolution what would you say Cyprus has to offer for resolving regional or wider cross-border disputes?

First of all, Cyprus is a safe forum. You look at the area here, and it’s in the middle of conflict, whereas Cyprus, despite the fact that we are under to occupation in part of the island, it’s a safe photo where the disputes are longstanding and therefore do not flare up. And we are not affected by what is happening in the general area. We do not get involved in the conflicts of our neighbours, and we are able, in fact, to best serve them as a safe haven in which they can come and actually resolve disputes, especially by arbitration.

In fact, we are promoting Cyprus as an arbitration centre, and we, I’m core organiser of the Cyprus Arbitration Day and Co-chair. And we organise each year a get together of people from the whole area so that we can sit down and promote the idea of using a safe area in this region to resolve disputes. We have a modern legal system. It’s based on common law, so especially English professionals, but all common law country professionals are, familiar with the basic principles of the law that we apply. In fact, we are very much based on an English common law because of our history of being an English colony in the distant past, not so distant 60 something years ago, the professionals in Cyprus are quite experienced in handling international disputes because we had such a huge involvement in the international, field of commerce with companies and with taxation benefits.

We’ve all come across several different nationalities, and we offer experience in handling diverse and multi-jurisdictional disputes. In addition, we have now a completely new legal system of a newly created appeals court, which is able to handle cases at appeal level much quicker with new procedural rules and an amendment of the course of justice law that brings up to the forefront of being a centre for dispute resolution, both in litigation and arbitration.

Can you explain the role of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) methods, such as arbitration and mediation, in the context of resolving commercial disputes in Cyprus?

First of all, while our core system has been extensively revised and, and, and modernised, it is still a core system which has a heavy workload. It is much better to choose arbitration or other forms of a DR to resolve disputes rather than go through the waiting period of actually having a hearing in the court system. Apart from expedited hearings such as interim orders, everything else takes its course and will take a bit of a time with arbitration, you can have a much faster and much more efficient resolution of disputes. Therefore, Cyprus is investing in arbitration quite extensively, be exactly because we need to have disputes resolved quicker.

Arbitration in the region, as I mentioned before, is an advantage of Cyprus. So we invest in it. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same about mediation. It’s a cultural thing. People are trigger happy rather than sit down and mediate, so they prefer to go to litigation, but we have developed in the firm mediators who handle the needs of the clients in mediation. However, it’s not a widely used practice in YPs. There is an increased focus on arbitration not one for mediation. We are a model law country, so we follow the model law in resolving arbitration disputes. And the emphasis in Cyprus is mainly in arbitration in order to assist in the more efficient resolution of disputes.

What recent changes or developments in Cyprus’ dispute resolution mechanisms have had a significant impact on the efficiency and fairness of the resolution process?

First of all, one major development that we’re going through is a new set of civil procedure rules. It is a set of rules that is based on the approach of the English courts. It is the result of experts from England spending years in Cyprus and working out what is best suited for Cyprus. It’s a very modern set of procedural rules. It allows for efficient handling of litigation. It’s more in line of what we were doing for years as arbitration experts and arbitrators of having the arbitrator now the court take on the case and handle it, giving property directions, getting hands-on approach to the case and resolving it quickly.

The system is still having teething problems, mainly because of the difficulty of the professionals involved to become familiar with it.
And we do not have all the precedents we would like to have from s courts. Thankfully, because it’s near to the English prototype, we can get some guidance from England. And in fact, we all bought the white book in a recent edition to facilitate our work, the changes in the court system where we have now a court of appeal, a supreme court, and a constitutional court, whereas we had one court doing all three functions, helps quicker resolution of disputes at appeal level and higher.

We have on course to become fully constituted our new commercial court, which allows proceedings in English, which is a major development because we get rid of all the translators every time we have an international dispute. And we are merely waiting for the Supreme Court to make the appointment of the judges of the commercial court. They’re being very careful. They want to make sure that the judges are up to it. Very commercial are astute and will be able to fulfil the function of handling complex international commercial cases and allow the new commercial court to be a success. We believe in this and we think it’ll help tremendously in how the dispute resolution mechanism will develop.

Thirdly and lastly, there has been an amendment of court of justice law, which has expanded the jurisdiction of the Cyprus court. Cyber courts now have the right, for example to give injunctions in cases being handled anywhere in the world in aid of those proceedings, whereas we could only get this or injunctions in Europe. Now we have expanded to the entire world. You may be sitting in the US and you need some assistance with regard to Cyprus because of evidence in Cyprus, because of assets in Cyprus where you want to freeze these assets.

This is now possible where it wasn’t before, and we have expanded. We got read in fact of the narrow concept of the territorial jurisdiction of the district court of Lima, for example. We no longer need to find a very narrow jurisdictional connection if there is a right. The philosophy is that there will always be a remedy. And if there is no district court having territorial jurisdiction, the district covenant takes over.

In all cases where we don’t have specific territorial jurisdiction, it has expanded tremendously our ability to file in Cyprus cases, which we couldn’t file before. So it’s a very hopeful set of developments that will help the dispute resolution mechanism in Cyprus be even more efficient and more successful.

In cross-border disputes involving parties in Cyprus, how are conflicts of laws and jurisdictional issues typically handled, and what mechanisms exist to enforce foreign judgments within the Cypriot legal system?

Yes, let me start by saying that if it’s a, it’s an award in arbitration. We are along with another 160 something countries s of the new convention. In addition, we have adopted locally, all the necessary legislative, um, mechanism required to make sure that the enforcement of an award in arbitration is efficient, is fast, and it’s effective. This however, is not the most major development. It has been around a bit longer. The development, which I mentioned before of the jurisdiction of the courts, has allowed it to take on a bigger role, a more international role.

The other ways of recognising and enforcing foreign judgments. We have several options. For example, if it’s an EU, judgment, it’s automatically recognised whether in insolvency proceedings under the EU insolvency regulation, whether in general litigation, under the bruss request, regulation on jurisdiction and recognition of judgments. It does not require a complex procedure. You just register the judgment by an ex parte application and the other side is not served. And then the other side has a chance to come in and object. And if they don’t, it’s a done deed.
There are bilateral treaties which also help us in recognising judgments from countries which are not in the EU, such as Russia, for example.
It’s an old treaty. It needs amendment. It’ll not happen in this climate.

But there are other bilateral treaties where we do recognise, judgments of foreign countries other than Europe. There is an interesting provision in our laws unique to Cyprus, in that we recognise English judgments post Brexit. We have an old colonial law, which was in place before our independence, which remains a possible gateway to recognise English judgments when in Europe. They are not because of Brexit. And it gives a unique advantage of Cyprus to use Cyprus as a basis for recognition and enforcement of judgments issued in England.

And lastly, if we don’t have any of this, we have the common law recognition process by which we recognise the judgment issued in any country, in the sense that provided there are the rules of natural justice have been followed, and there has been the opportunity of the other side to appear and state its case a judgment by any foreign country. Having jurisdiction in the matter can be recognised by a common action. You file an action in Cyprus, you seek a declaration that the judgment is recognised, the amounts payable are paid. And in fact, our office has handled two very, very large cases from the us I was going to say multimillion, but actually the first one was 2 billion, so it classifies as something more than multimillion. And the next one is 3 billion that we are handling now these days. And the respondent is another country. I cannot say something more, but two US judgments, which we don’t have any, we treaty under which to recognise, can be recognised through a common election in a fast and efficient procedure.