From the 1st to the 2nd of November, 2018, the roundtable ‘Judicial Protection of Business Entity Rights: The Experience of Uzbekistan and Foreign Practice’ was held at the conference hall of the Registan Plaza hotel in Samarkand. The event was organized by the Supreme Court of the Republic of Uzbekistan, alongside the OSCE Project Coordinator, UNDP, USAID and GIZ, with domestic and international experts in attendance.

The protection of the rights and freedoms of entrepreneurs and the judicial support of their interests, having been a major direction of on-going legal reform in Uzbekistan, was the focus of the international roundtable held this week in Samarkand. This event saw the development of recommendations and proposals for legislative improvements in the field.

The event’s participants included deputies of the Legislative Chamber and members of the Senate of the Oliy Majlis, judges, lawyers and representatives of the ‘Development Strategy’ Center, the State Services Agency under the Ministry of Justice of Uzbekistan, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Association of Arbitration Courts. Also attending were international experts from Austria, Russia and France.

All speakers at the event were unanimous in their opinion that the protection of the rights and legitimate interests of business entities is a key area of state policy in Uzbekistan. They recognized the concrete measures taken by the country to ensure the smooth running of business activities, to create favorable conditions for doing business, and to increase investment attractiveness.

Examples of these measures include the Law ‘On Anti-corruption’, developed and adopted at the initiative of President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, with the aim of curbing unlawful encroachments on the right to private property, and unreasonable interventions into business activities. Additionally, in order to introduce new mechanisms for creating effective dialogue between business entities and government bodies, and to create additional guarantees of state protection for the rights and legitimate interests of business entities, the Institute of the Business Ombudsman was established.

The roundtable’s panel discussion addressed such important matters as the improvement of national legislation to raise the efficiency and quality of legal proceedings, the introduction of effective protection mechanisms and institutions to guarantee the rights and interests of entrepreneurs, and the use of alternative tools for resolving disputes between entrepreneurs.

Last but not least, the international experts at the event spoke about modern mechanisms for the judicial protection of the rights and legitimate interests of entrepreneurs applied abroad. They presented their views on doing business with foreign partners, and offered key recommendations to investors and the host state, developed in light of their experience in international arbitration.