ARBITRATION AND TOURISM: A FIELD TO EXPLORE contract where it is inserted, if this was the willing of the parties. It is established in Portuguese law, in line with the other “UNCITRAL” legal systems, that the nullity of the contract in which the arbitration agreement was inserted does not determine the nullity of the arbitration agreement, except when it is shown that the contract would not have been concluded without the arbitration agreement. This regime is well understood, as it ensures that the parties are unprotected in relation to the resolution of the dispute arising from the nullity of the contract they entered into. Or, in another situation, when the contract has not yet come into effect because it has been subject to a suspensive condition. Arbitration agreements may only be entered into on tradable rights. This expression fortunately replaced the previous reference to unavailable rights, as it was already common knowledge that there were unavailable rights that could be subject to voluntary arbitration. Currently, if the legal position of the parties is susceptible to transaction, any resulting dispute is arbitrable. 2.3 The arbitration commitment and the arbitration clause The arbitration commitment is the agreement (agreement) relating to a dispute already existing, including in the courts of the State. Indeed, there is nothing to prevent the parties to a court proceeding already in progress from deciding and binding themselves reciprocally to have that dispute decided by an arbitral tribunal. The most common cause for the conclusion of arbitration commitments is the slowness of the State courts, which makes the parties feel the “need” to resort to an arbitration court in order to safeguard the useful effect of the decision that will be rendered. The arbitration commitment should be set out in a written document signed by the parties. The arbitration clause shares the form of the arbitration commitment and must be agreed in writing5, either as part of another contract or as an autonomous agreement. Practice shows that arbitration clauses are usually integrated into the contract whose relationship they aim to protect. Despite the virtues of arbitration, some care must be taken in drafting arbitration clauses. We refer to this special care here, rather than in the arbitration clause, because the latter, because it deals with an existing dispute, is more immune to the necessary predictive abilities of the author of the arbitration clause. If in the commitment the parties already know what divides them and, probably even, the respective arguments they have put forward in the ongoing dispute, at the time of the conclusion of the clause the parties are still at a contractually sound moment and, whether through 5 This requirement of written form already appears in the 1958 New York Convention
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