Article 98

1. Within the scope of this Agreement, each Party undertakes to ensure that natural and legal persons of the other Party have access free of discrimination in relation to its own nationals to the competent courts and administrative organs of the Parties to defend their individual rights and their property rights, including those concerning intellectual, industrial and commercial property.

2. Within the limits of their respective powers, the Parties:

- shall encourage the adoption of arbitration for the settlement of disputes arising out of commercial and cooperation transactions concluded by economic operators of the Community and those of Russia,

- agree that where a dispute is submitted to arbitration, each Party to the dispute may, except where the rules of the arbitration centre chosen by the Parties provide otherwise, choose its own arbitrator, irrespective of his nationality, and that the presiding third arbitrator or the sole arbitrator may be a citizen of a third State,

- will recommend their economic operators to choose by mutual consent the law applicable to their contracts,

- shall encourage recourse to the arbitration rules elaborated by the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (Uncitral) and to arbitration by any centre of a State signatory to the Convention on Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards done at New York on 10 June 1958.