Samenvatting

Slovenia realized very early that mediation as a form of a more flexible, consumer-friendly and interest-driven procedure can also be utilised as an effective means of court backlog reduction. The court-annexed mediation model was launched in 2001 without any regulatory framework as a pilot project at the District Court of Ljubljana. As a consequence of the successful pilot project court-annexed mediation was introduced into every first-instance and second-instance court. The main incentives for the mediation model were that it was free of charge, i.e. the costs of mediation were included into the court budgets, that it was performed by judges trained as mediators and that attorneys were included into the process at a very early stage. Mediation has become widely accepted, as the voluntary uptake by the parties is quite high and referral to mediation by judges against the will of litigants is rather an exception.