The authors give an insight into the Spanish developments in ADR in the recent years of economic crisis. The crisis has led to a fuller activation of the Spanish ADR system. The larger number of mediation processes is clearly related to the difficulties collective bargaining is going through. As a result of the latest liberal reform which decentralises collective bargaining, a new crack has opened in the overall system: since September 2012 there is regulation on the functioning of the National Consultative Committee for Collective Agreements, granting it the authority to solve any dispute arising between the undertaking and workers’ representatives regarding total or partial opting-out of the collective agreement. Furthermore, regions without an ADR system in place should forward such disputes in their territory to the Committee.

Here the authors report on the seminar ‘(Labor) Mediation in Belgium; Chances, challenges and bottlenecks’, which took place on September 11^th, 2013. During this seminar a debate took place between several mediation stakeholders in Belgium.

In this article the authors describe aspects of mediation in individual labour conflicts. In doing so, they use jurisprudence, judgements of the disciplinary commission for mediators en their own experiences as mediators. They end with the conclusion that mediation in labour conflicts needs specific knowledge, additional to the general training for mediation.

In 2005 the Mediation Act came into force in Belgium. This act makes it possible starting a procedural and legal mediation procedure, besides the usual legal measures. This article starts with a short introduction to the legal measures and continues with some notable results of an inquiry to the social mediation field by B-Mediation in cooperation with the Federal Mediation Commission. The results of the inquiry are collected in the report Barometer van de bemiddeling 2012. The authors end with confronting the results with their own experiences and an explanation of their own model for practice, and the description of a recent case.

Educated as a psychiatrist, Dr. Compernolle first became one of the world’s leading experts in work-related stress. From there, he developed into a coach of executive teams, frequently engaged by large multinational companies. Mr. Compernolle discusses the differences between coaching and mediation, and shares some of his techniques for changing communication dynamics within teams. His special interest concerns family businesses, where emotions easily surface, and where problems need to be solved swiftly, to avert irreparable damage to family relations. Mr. Compernolle concludes the interview discussing some observations from his latest book: BrainChains.

Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) and Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) are on the rise in Europe and different Member States. In May 2013, the European Parliament and Council adopted an ADR Directive (n 2013/11) and ODR Regulation (n 524/2013) that will bring major changes in the European and national ADR landscapes. Both instruments are analyzed in this article. On the other hand, attention is also paid to the Belgian ODR-platform Belmed, that was created in 2011 and facilitates Belgian consumers to make an online ADR application. Finally, a plea is made for the exchange of data between ODR-platforms and national regulators, as a means to detect mass cases.

Employee resistance to change is a key factor to turnaround failure. Interim managers who support companies in financial distress, mediate between employees, management, shareholders, bank, and other stakeholders in order to solve organisational conflicts. This article explores the internal social dynamic aspects of a turnaround. It develops a theoretical framework on the role of trust, emotion and communication, and its affect on reducing internal resistance, and describes the outcomes of an exploratory research study. Findings confirm that employee motivation to make a reorganisation a success significantly impacts upon turnaround success. Resistance can be reduced by an open communication climate, offering a new perspective, attention to emotions, managing by walking around, and ‘practicing what you preach’. More research is necessary to generalize the findings and to better understand success and failure factors.

Providing access to justice is a major challenge for any judicial system. Canada has gone to great lengths to meet this challenge over the past thirty years, in part by developing alternative dispute resolution methods. Unfortunately, results have been mixed. Canadian society is currently preparing to renew its vision of access to justice and the contribution of dispute resolution methods in meeting that challenge. What lessons can we learn from Canada’s experience? What are the new directions and initiatives for access to justice? Our paper suggests that the Canadian experience can make two contributions to the access to justice debate. First, we suggest that the notion is evolving in the legal community from an institutional perspective to a contextual vision of access to justice. Second, we point out an evolution of alternative or appropriate dispute resolution methods toward a participatory justice movement. Our paper proposes a new Canadian perspective on access to justice and dispute resolution methods.

Before starting as a community-mediator the mediator has to follow a training. In this training he learns how to act as a mediator when there is a dispute between neighbours. Important is to realize that in most of the neighbour quarrels not the conflict itself is the central problem. Mostly the problem is people do not feel heard, seen and recognized in their problems. In the training the mediator learns how to give attention to that real problem. In a mediation he has to be aware of his role as a mediator and of the professional attitude he must have. Besides that, the mediator must help the parties coming to be aware of their own behaviour.
Finally, community-mediator is not just a volunteer job. The mediator has to pay much attention to his way of communicating and should feel well in the entire process, such as making arrangements, conducting interviews with the parties, the conciliation conversation and aftercare.

On 26 May 2013 Ard van der Steur, Netherlands MP for the liberal democrats, introduced a cluster of three mediation bills to secure the status of mediation as a sound alternative to traditional in-court adjudication in civil and administrative disputes. Although the starting point in these bills is that mediation should take place on a voluntary basis, there are some arrangements that may result in quasi compulsory mediation. One such arrangement is that the judge, on his own motion, may refer parties to mediation. Also parties have to proof that they first have attempted to settle their dispute through mediation and if not, why not.

This diptych consists of two articles: the first, The Rise and Fall of Mediation in Italy, by Elisabetta Silvestri, analyzes the way in which the Italian Constitutional Court has recently (October-December 2012) struck down a Decree that had introduced mandatory mediation in a wide range of civil procedure areas in Italy. The second article, The EU’s Italian Job, by Rob Jagtenberg, discusses the way in which the Advocate-General with the Court of Justice of the European Union has dealt with the request for a preliminary ruling on the compatibility of the same Decree with European law (Opinion of 19 April 2013). It appears that at both Court levels, the subject was perceived as too risky to judge on the merits: mandatory mediation thus ends as a potato too hot to hold in a court’s hand.

On 1 January 2013 the new Mediation Rules of CEPANI (the Belgian Center for Arbitration and Mediation) entered into force. The 2013 CEPANI Mediation Rules replace the 2005 version of the CEPANI Mediation Rules and also the 2010 version of the CEPANI ICT (Information and Communication Technology) Mediation Rules. The 2013 Rules contain provisions on the introduction of the mediation, the appointment of the mediator, the mediation protocol to be established at the beginning of the mediation process, the conduct of the mediation, the confidentiality, the end of the mediation and its costs. The authors comment on these various provisions of the CEPANI Mediation Rules and explain thereby also the relevant provisions of the Belgian Mediation Law contained in Chapter VII of the Belgian Judicial Code.