On December 1st, 1986, an important change took place in Dutch arbitration law. Until then, the old provisions of the Code of Civil Procedure dating from 1838 had governed arbitrations conducted in the Netherlands. In spite of judicial attempts to adapt those rules to modern commercial circumstances, many of them had clearly become obsolete. The present state of arbitration law could only be understood in the light of a body of caselaw, which did little to promote the attractions of a Dutch arbitral forum to international business. This became an increasing source of concern in the Netherlands as international commercial arbitration was expanding and came to offer an alternative to court litigation in many branches of trade and industry. By modernising their arbitration law various other Western European States had taken steps to enhance their chances of being selected as the arbitration host country.