THE AUTHOR:
Emanuele Tartaglini, Trainee Lawyer at A&O Shearman
On 30 June 2026, Gaillard Banifatemi Shelbaya (“GBS”) Disputes hosted a panel discussion in Paris titled “Expedited Procedures under the SCC Rules: Efficiency, Strategy and Practice”. Following opening remarks by GBS Founding Partner Yas Banifatemi, the discussion was moderated by Ketevan Betaneli (Betaneli Arbitration) and brought together practitioners representing institutional, arbitrator, and counsel perspectives to examine the full range of the SCC’s accelerated dispute resolution tools.
This article reports on the key takeaways from the event, covering the SCC’s expedited frameworks, the combination clause, institutional governance, the “due process paranoia trap”, and the strategic and practical dimensions of emergency arbitrator and SCC Express procedures.
Redefining the Procedural Timeline
Opening the discussion, Betaneli set the scene: arbitral institutions are adapting rapidly to commercial demands, designing increasingly agile procedures. The panel was convened to explore how the SCC’s suite of expedited tools fits within that broader trend.
To anchor the debate, Jake Lowther (SCC Arbitration Institute) drew on the SCC’s latest statistics. In 2025, the SCC administered 213 cases: 54% under the standard Arbitration Rules and 38% — roughly 82 cases — under the Expedited Arbitration Rules, known in Swedish as the “simplified arbitration rules”.
While recent market innovations such as the ICC’s Highly Expedited Arbitration Provisions (“HEAP”) target a three-month resolution window, the SCC has operated its own three-month Expedited Arbitration Rules since 1995 — providing three decades of institutional data and a head start on ultra-fast dispute management that newer procedures are striving to achieve.
Offering a comparative institutional view, Maria Hauser-Morel (HANEFELD) traced the evolution of user demands at the International Chamber of Commerce (“ICC”). Following the success of its six-month Expedited Procedure introduced by the ICC in 2017, the ICC recently launched its HEAP, a three-month opt-in mechanism tailored for low-value claims or recurring contractual disputes. Hauser-Morel noted that, under the HEAP, parties to such ultra-fast proceedings may waive their right to a reasoned award — a possibility that was confirmed as legally sound by recent jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”), which has held that party agreements to accept unreasoned awards are robust and enforceable.
Flexibility by Design and the SCC’s Combination Clause
A distinctive feature of the SCC’s expedited framework is its “combination clause”. Rather than requiring parties to commit to a specific procedural track at the contract drafting stage, the clause empowers the SCC Board to determine the appropriate track once a dispute arises.
Lowther cited SCC statistics that 88% of users opt for the clause granting the SCC Board full discretion, rather than a clause tied to a strict monetary threshold. When exercising that discretion, the Board evaluates inter alia the complexity of the claims, any jurisdictional nuances, and the necessity of a hearing or document production.
Despite parties increasingly requesting hearings and limited document production in expedited cases, procedural efficiency holds: in 2025, the average SCC expedited case reached a final award in just 3.7 months, with 49% of cases concluded within the strict three-month deadline.
Institutional Agility at the SCC
Turning to institutional governance, the panel examined the SCC’s internal machinery. The SCC Board comprises a Chairperson, three Vice-Chairpersons, and twelve ordinary members, with a 50/50 split between Scandinavian and non-Scandinavian members and over 70% female representation.
Ioana Knoll-Tudor (Addleshaw Goddard), speaking from her position as a member of the SCC Board, explained the division of labour between the Board and the Secretariat: the Secretariat prepares detailed briefs ahead of monthly Board meetings, while the Board retains authority over prima facie jurisdictional assessments, arbitrator appointments and challenges, and some other procedural decisions. Day-to-day administration is delegated to prevent bottlenecks, with urgent decisions escalated directly to the Chairperson.
On appointments, Knoll-Tudor noted that while a strong CV is a baseline, it is not a determinant. The Board’s collective, firsthand experience with candidates — including their actual availability — is an element considered for appointments.
This agility extends to ISDS. Where parties fail to specify a seat in intra-EU investment disputes, the SCC Board proactively selects a seat outside the EU — such as Switzerland — to protect enforceability. The SCC’s 2025 report Arbitrating for Peace records 129 ISDS cases administered since 1993.
Navigating the “Due Process Paranoia Trap”
A recurring challenge is procedural “loading”, where parties seek to compress a standard arbitration’s full procedural programme into a three-month window. Hauser-Morel cautioned against the resulting “due process paranoia trap”, arguing that most complaints stem from early miscommunication rather than the compressed timeline itself. Her prescription for arbitrators: invest heavily in the Case Management Conference (“CMC”) to secure genuine party buy-in on the procedural timetable from the outset. In cases involving a non-participating party, she recommended drawing on institutional support as a safeguard for the eventual enforceable award.
While expedited rules grant arbitrators broad powers to limit submissions or dispense with hearings, Hauser-Morel cautioned that these must be exercised with care and foresight. “You have to think like a chess player”, she observed, adding “these smaller cases actually require the tribunal to be even more on top of things, both procedurally and on the substance”.
Emergency Arbitration
When an expedited track is still too slow, parties turn to Emergency Arbitration (“EA”). The SCC appoints an emergency arbitrator within 24 hours of a complete request — in practice within 12 hours across all 2025 cases — with a decision to follow within 5 calendar days of referral.
The SCC administers an EA unless it “manifestly lacks jurisdiction” — a deliberately low bar. Paschalis Paschalidis (GBS Disputes) cautioned against conflating that administrative threshold with the substantive standard for granting interim relief, which requires demonstrating urgency, risk of irreparable harm, and proportionality. Strategically, a swift EA victory can demoralise an opponent and shift settlement leverage; favourable obiter dicta are sometimes invoked in the main proceedings, though EA findings do not bind the arbitral tribunal.
On ISDS EAs, Paschalidis argued the process is an “unfair exercise” for States, given bureaucratic and procurement constraints that make retaining counsel within 5 days difficult. Lowther added that in practice arbitrators and institutions account for those constraints — and that based on the SCC statistics, investors generally do not prevail in ISDS EAs at the SCC.
SCC Express: A Three-Week Fix for Commercial Deadlocks
The event concluded with an overview of SCC Express, the SCC’s newest tool. In the late 2010s, the SCC observed parties using EA not for genuine interim relief but to obtain an early neutral assessment of their merits. SCC Express was launched in 2021 to meet that need directly: for a fixed fee, parties receive a Neutral’s assessment within three weeks. The outcome is non-binding by default, though parties can agree to make it binding or convert it into a formal arbitral award.
Knoll-Tudor identified SCC Express as well-suited to in-house counsel and joint ventures where a discrete legal question is stalling a broader project. The procedure’s success, she stressed, depends on appointing a Neutral with genuine sector-specific expertise, not merely legal acumen.
Key Takeaways
The Paris discussion illustrated the coherence of the SCC’s procedural toolkit — a genuine spectrum from the three-week SCC Express assessment to the five-day EA sprint — and the institutional depth behind it. Among the key takeaways were:
- The SCC’s experience is unmatched. Three decades of three-month expedited arbitration generate institutional knowledge that newer procedures cannot replicate.
- The combination clause is the SCC’s signature flexibility tool. With 88% of users opting for Board discretion over a monetary threshold, the SCC can match procedural intensity to the complexity of a dispute as it actually arises.
- Speed and due process are compatible. The “due process paranoia trap” is a product of procedural loading and poor early communication, not the compressed timeline. Proactive case management — above all, a rigorous CMC — is the cure.
- EA is a precision instrument. The SCC’s low “manifest lack” threshold for administration is deliberately distinct from the high substantive bar for granting interim relief.
- SCC Express fills a genuine gap. A fixed-fee, three-week neutral assessment — non-binding by default — addresses the need for an early expert review without the commitment of a full arbitration.
- Institutional governance is a competitive advantage. The SCC Board’s composition and delegated decision-making structure enable it to make appointments and jurisdictional calls at the pace that fast-track procedures demand.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Emanuele Tartaglini is a Trainee Lawyer (Stagiaire) at A&O Shearman in Paris and a former Intern at the SCC Arbitration Institute.
*The views and opinions expressed by authors are theirs and do not necessarily reflect those of their organizations, employers, or Daily Jus, Jus Mundi, or Jus Connect.
