On 30 March 2021, the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation, the International and Comparative Law Research Center (Moscow) and the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) organised a conference on the digitalization of international trade. The conference covered a range of key issues in international trade, such as digital trading platforms or electronic cross-border transactions. The panel on automated contracting was moderated by Christiane Wendehorst, accompanied by speakers André Janssen (Radboud University Nijmegen), Mateja Durovic (King’s College London) and Denis Kartamyshev (Legal Adviser, FinTech Association).

In her opening remarks, Christiane Wendehorst stressed that international trade is confronted with entirely new levels of automation due to the mass rollout of new technologies, such as the use of AI for contract formation, contract performance and overall contract management, and Distributed Ledger Technologies, such as blockchain. These developments require careful analysis of existing legal instruments, both with regard to governance and regulation of these systems (e.g. minimum safety and other requirements) and with regard to contract law (e.g. the meaning of notions such as ‘knowledge’, ‘intent’ or ‘negligence’) on a national, regional or international level.

In their presentations, the speakers and international experts in the field provided insights into the legal challenges posed by smart contracts, also in regards to the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods as well as the need to introduce new legal definitions applicable to IT and ways to introduce effective risk-management.

Find out more about the conference program as well as a recording of the conference at https://praktikum.lfacademy.ru/digitalization-of-international-trade-eng-live