An interview was held with Lex Penders, judge in the court of Utrecht. Subject of the interview was the role of the judge as regierechter (judge-conflictmanager) in the pilot project Customized Conflict Resolution. He talks about his experiences in the pilot and his ideas for future improvements in court hearings.

Nowadays, court hearings play a central part in Dutch civil procedures. Until recently, little was known about how these hearings took place and how the parties involved experienced them. From the perspective of the parties involved, it is better if judges do not only resolve disputes legally, but also act as a conflictmanager. For this purpose, a method called ‘Conflictoplossing op maat’ (‘Customized conflict resolution’) was introduced by Machteld Pel (former director of The Netherlands court-connected mediation agency). In this paper I discuss the method as well as the results from an experiment in practice. In short, the results indicate that the method is, though not easy to implement, useful to improve the hearings of court procedures in disputes between civilians.

In this article it is argued that bankruptcy courts really can help in preventing distressed companies to become bankrupt. However, the use of judicial reorganization procedures (moratoria) should then be abolished. By nature judicial reorganization instruments invoke polarization of debtors and creditors in fact making the (financial) problems of distressed companies worse. A new system for reorganization and dispute settlement should be introduced, at least in the Netherlands, in which insolvency judges act as mediators in confidential negotiation sessions between companies and their creditors. These negotiations should take place at an early stage of the insolvency process, in to be established (neutral) ‘Turnaround Chambers’ of district courts, and should be accompanied by a holistic business turnaround process taking place at the company at stake. By introducing this alternative system the dramatic failure rate of current judicial reorganization procedures (between 73%-95% in the Netherlands) can and will be reduced dramatically.

The option of caucusing – i.e. one-on-one conversations between the mediator and one of the parties – is what makes mediation different from other types of conflict resolution. Both the view that all that is discussed in the caucus should remain confidential and the view that this should essentially be shared with the other party lead to suboptimal results. Economically inefficient outcomes caused by strategic actions by the parties can be avoided if the mediator communicates the information disclosed to him/her in the caucus to the other party in such a way (‘noisy translation’) that this other party cannot use this information to the disadvantage of the disclosing party.

In the case of Rosalba Alassini v. Telecom Italia SpA the Court of Justice of the European Union has for the first time decided (18 March 2010) on the compatibility of a (Italian) statute mandatorily prescribing conciliation prior to application to a Court of Law, whereby the compatibility test was based on various European general principles of law. The author provides a critical comment on some inconsistencies in the judgment and the A-G’s earlier Opinion.

On 30 April 2010 the Belgian High Council of Justice organised the colloquium ‘Mediation: to believe and to practice’. Central to the colloquium was to what extent mediation can seriously contribute to the resolution of disputes within and outside the courts.

A symposium took place in Utrecht on 22 April 2010 to bid John Bosnak farewell as President of the Dutch Association of Attorney Mediators. Presentations were given on European aspects of professional privilege for mediators, on the antecedents of the European mediation directive and on psychological pitfalls that await the mediator who tries to oppress his/her own emotional stress.