The Law "On Arbitration in the Republic of Albania" is a recently adopted statute, enacted in mid-2023.This, together with the lack of a well-established arbitration culture within the Albanian justice system, places its implementation within a framework of challenges of both a practical and a theoretical nature.The focus of this paper is the analysis of the principle of legality, which simultaneously converges with the principle of due legal process, as provided for by the law in its formal aspect.This analysis is conducted through a comparison with international standards, including European norms, as well as with the consolidated jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), and is limited to a single element: the guarantees concerning the impartiality and independence of the arbitral tribunal, considered strictly within the law's formal meaning.The methodology used is a combination of doctrinal legal analysis and comparative analysis, based on national and international legal provisions.The doctrinal legal analysis has been carried out by referring solely to the formal legal provisions of Albanian arbitration law, without extending to their application in case law, since such an extension would deviate from the purpose of this paper.This analysis has included the case law of the European Court of Human Rights due to the role that the jurisprudence of the latter plays as a genuine source of law in Albania.At the conclusion of the analysis, the authors find that the new Law on Arbitration raises significant concerns regarding the formal guarantees of the impartiality and independence of the arbitral tribunal.
Xheka et al. (Mon,) studied this question.