This article examines the Belgian legislation aimed at safeguarding the confidential nature of mediation. It takes the perspective of all actors involved in the mediation process: the parties to the dispute, the mediator and experts or witnesses who participate in the mediation.

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.

CEPINA, the Belgian Centre for Arbitration and Mediation recently published special mediation rules for the resolution of IT disputes. The most important rules are discussed. Also the background of this initiative is highlighted.

This article deals with confidentiality in mediation proceedings. Confidentiality is considered to be one of the key advantages of mediation. Usually the parties agree that they will not be compelled to produce evidence concerning the mediation, nor call the mediator as a witness in case of subsequent judicial proceedings. However, it is not sure how the court in civil judicial proceedings will handle such an agreement. The court will have to balance the interests of confidentiality and establishing the truth. In some cases it is clear that the court should not respect the confidentiality agreement, for example when there is an obligation to disclose evidence of a criminal offence. In other cases there might be proper grounds to let the confidentiality prevail, but there is no guarantee that the court will respect the confidentiality agreement. As part of the implementation of the European directive on mediation Member States are obliged to adopt provisions about admissibility of evidence in civil judicial proceedings in order to protect certain aspects of confidentiality of mediation proceedings.