A new report from the SCC examines a decade of disputes involving parties from Germany, Austria and Switzerland, the 'DACH' region. The first in a planned series of deep dives into specific regions and jurisdictions, the report draws on ten years of caseload data to show how the SCC has become a trusted forum for DACH businesses navigating cross-border disputes, and features the perspectives of leading voices from the region

A significant and growing part of the SCC’s international caseload

Germany, Austria and Switzerland together constitute one of the SCC’s most significant sources of users outside the Nordics. The report examines 170 SCC arbitrations registered between January 2015 and December 2025 involving at least one DACH party, and finds that the pace of registrations has picked up markedly in recent years, rising from an average of 15 cases per year between 2015 and 2019 to 23 cases in 2024 and 19 in 2025.

In 2025 alone, half of the SCC’s 213 registered cases were international, and the 19 DACH cases registered that year accounted for roughly 18 per cent of the SCC’s international caseload.

A caseload spanning industries, sectors and billions of euros

The DACH caseload spans a broad range of industries, led over the decade by retail and consumer products (21 per cent) and energy (18 per cent). The report notes a clear shift in composition over time: technology, automotive, and mining and metals have each gained ground since 2020, consistent with the priority accorded to energy transition and advanced manufacturing in the German-Swedish trade relationship, while life sciences has declined from 13 per cent of cases in 2015-2019 to 6 per cent in 2020-2025.

The aggregate recorded amount in dispute across DACH cases over the decade was approximately EUR 10.79 billion. That figure is driven substantially by three exceptionally high-value cases; excluding these, the remaining 160 cases total approximately EUR 3.06 billion, with an average of EUR 19.1 million and a median of EUR 2.26 million per case, placing the typical DACH dispute squarely in the mid-market commercial range.

Reach far beyond the Nordics

Swedish law applied in 52 per cent of DACH cases, and Stockholm served as the seat of arbitration in 78 per cent, underlining Sweden’s continued centrality for DACH parties even as their disputes span the globe. Nordic parties appear as counterparties in approximately 43 per cent of DACH cases, but a majority (57 per cent) involve counterparties from outside the Nordics altogether, drawn from more than 20 jurisdictions including Russia, the United States, China, Poland and the United Kingdom.

Cases referred to an Arbitral Tribunal, Mediator or Arbitrator concluded in an average of 12.2 months, with a median of 10.6 months, broadly in line with the SCC’s general caseload statistics.

Germany in focus

Of the 170 DACH cases, 100 involve a German party, and the report devotes particular attention to this segment of the caseload. German parties have brought disputes against counterparties from Russia, Sweden, Albania, Cyprus, Denmark, China, the United Kingdom, the United States, Uzbekistan, Poland, Belarus and Finland, among others, with proceedings conducted in English, Russian, Swedish, Spanish and German, and governed by a correspondingly wide range of laws.

This diversity, the report finds, demonstrates that German parties do not turn to the SCC solely on account of the strong trade ties between Germany and Sweden, but select the SCC as a neutral forum for disputes with a genuinely wide range of counterparties. As Dr Sven Lange, Partner at Busse Disputes in Frankfurt and member of the SCC Board, observes in the report:

The SCC offers world-leading dispute resolution services – not just for disputes involving Swedish or Nordic parties, but also for other international disputes. German parties have evidently recognised the capabilities of the SCC and rightly perceive it as a neutral and efficient forum for their international disputes.

A relationship built on trust and neutrality

The report situates this caseload within the broader German-Swedish trade relationship, describing Germany as consistently Sweden’s largest trading partner and pointing to the two countries’ Strategic Innovation Partnership, launched in 2017 and expanded in 2024 and 2025 to cover security, defence, space, and further areas of cooperation. Trade and investment of this scale, the report observes, give rise to a corresponding volume of commercial disputes, and to a demand for a neutral, efficient forum that does not require either side to litigate in the other’s domestic courts.

The report also highlights the SCC’s broader dispute resolution toolkit as a draw for DACH users, who make disproportionate use of the SCC’s full Arbitration Rules, 79 per cent of DACH cases in 2025, compared with 54 per cent SCC-wide, alongside sustained use of SCC mediation. Germany has for years been among the most frequently represented jurisdictions in SCC mediations, a pattern that Caroline Falconer, Secretary General of the SCC, links to a broader willingness among German parties to select whichever SCC service best suits the dispute at hand.

Germany has for years been among the most frequently represented jurisdictions in SCC cases, and in particular, under the SCC Mediation Rules

– Caroline Falconer, Secretary General, SCC Arbitration Institute

Elke Umbeck, Partner at Heuking in Hamburg and a member of the SCC Arbitrators’ Council, points to a related cultural dimension: German parties, she notes, are often more inclined to reach settlements during their disputes rather than fighting until the very end, valuing the savings in cost and time that a negotiated resolution can offer.

Placing DACH alongside the SCC’s other regional caseloads

The report also compares the DACH caseload with two other regional caseloads previously examined by the SCC: the Baltic states and Poland. At 170 cases over the decade, the DACH caseload is the largest of the three, ahead of 80 Baltic cases and 34 Polish cases. Swedish law remains the most common choice of governing law across all three, though its share is markedly higher for DACH parties (52 per cent) than for Baltic (38 per cent) or Polish (29 per cent) parties, while Stockholm’s dominance as seat is consistent throughout, ranging from 74 to 91 per cent.

Looking ahead

The report concludes that DACH-related disputes form a substantial and stable part of the SCC’s international caseload, one that has grown steadily over the past decade and shows signs of continued maturing as it shifts toward larger, more complex energy and industrial disputes. With the German Federal Foreign Office describing a close and deepening partnership with Sweden, and Swedish businesses continuing to treat Germany as one of their most important trading partners, the commercial activity feeding the SCC’s DACH caseload looks set to keep growing.