The right to protection of the rights of participants in international commercial transactions in arbitration is currently recognized worldwide and is guaranteed both at the level of national legislation and in the provisions of a number of international treaties. International commercial arbitrations, which have operated successfully in many countries over the past 70 years, have proven their effectiveness and efficiency, their decisions have a global unified enforcement mechanism based on the provisions of the New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards of 1958 and correspondent national rules of legislation. As of September 2021, 168 countries are parties to the Convention, which means that the arbitration regime established by the Convention applies to all these countries. In national law, the legal regime of arbitration is usually governed by separate laws or provisions of codified acts.

The purpose of the article is to study the legal conclusions of the European Court of Human Rights on the exercise by participants in international trade of the right to protection of their rights in arbitration.

The article analyzes the issues of ensuring the exercise of the right to a fair trial, protection and access to justice through the settlement of disputes in international commercial arbitration. It is established that with the conclusion of an arbitration agreement between the parties to the dispute in light of the case law of the ECtHR, participants in international trade recognize and guarantee the right to resolve disputes covered by the arbitration agreement in international commercial arbitration. Interpretation of the derogating effect of the arbitration agreement as a restriction of the right to defence in a state courtis currently completely unfounded and contradicts the general principles of law and legal conclusions of the Court and rather a manifestation of dishonesty of the party raising the issue in this context, and this is mainly the party against whom the arbitral award was made, or the party who, trying to delay or block the process of consideration and resolution of the dispute, makes attempts to circumvent the current arbitration agreement to refer the case to state court.

Based on the analysis of the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, the author resumes that the conclusion of such an agreement cannot be interpreted as an unjustified restriction of the right to defence in national courts. After all, by voluntarily concluding an arbitration agreement, a person or company voluntarily limits the possibility of resolving disputes arising from civil relations in state courts, but the right to defence and access to court is not limited, because in this case the dispute is considered by a competent (authorized by the state to resolve relevant disputes in accordance with the law) arbitration court.