This Volume is a special issue, almost entirely dedicated to the TMD symposium that took place on 1 December 2016 at the premises of Intersentia Publishing company near Antwerp. The symposium addressed the current Belgian and Dutch plans for new legislation aiming to further the use of mediation by intending litigants. The TMD Editorial Board is honoured that an insight into the respective plans was provided by the highest level authorities, that is: Mr. Koen Geens, the Belgian Minister of Justice, and Mr. Dennis Hesemans, senior counsel to the Dutch Minister of Justice. The Board is equally honoured that on behalf of the European Commission, Mrs. Karen Vandekerckhove, Acting Head of Unit at DG Justice and Consumers, was willing to discuss the outcomes of the recent official Evaluation of the EU Mediation Directive 52/2008. These findings made it possible to assess the Belgian and Dutch plans in a broader European perspective. The presentations delivered by these three keynote speakers have been reworked and are included as main contributions in this Volume.

Over the last years the expectations of Belgian clients have changed and the Flemish lawyer needs to adapt his positioning. Clients are looking for a personalized solution that not only provides a solution for the substantive (pure legal) aspect of the dispute, but also meets, at least takes into account, the more emotional and relational aspects of the conflict.
In collaborative negotiation (also called principled or interest-based negotiation), the approach is to treat the relationship as an important and valuable element while seeking an equitable and fair agreement for all parties.
As part of the collaborative law method, each party engages its own specially trained Collaborative attorney whose job consists in helping to settle the dispute outside the court. If one of the parties however decides to go to court, the collaborative law process terminates and both attorneys are disqualified from any further involvement in the case.
The Association of French- and German-speaking Bars of Belgium has integrated collaborative law in its code of ethics. The Association of Dutch speaking Bars of Belgium looks in which way collaborative law can also become a part of the practice of the Flemish lawyer.

Taking the recent European Commission’s Report on the application of Mediation Directive 2008/52/EC as a starting point, the authors set out to reconstruct the pattern of ADR/mediation activities undertaken by the EU and the Council of Europe over the past 40 years. The authors conclude that the European initiatives have been conducive to a broadening and deepening of the ADR debate. Remarkable shifts can be observed in the emphasis placed by the European agencies during this period, notably a shift from emancipatory to efficiency-based arguments. The inherent coupling of private mediation and public adjudication entails risks however for each of these distinct conflict resolution strategies. The authors call for advanced research designs to generate the data needed for a genuine evidence-based policy in this domain.

In the last couple of years we see new models of accessible and innovative jurisdiction, such as ‘neighbors judge’, ‘ejudge’ and the ‘office hour judge’. Are these innovations really new? This article gives insight into the Dutch legal history of accessible jurisdiction and compares the forms of accessible jurisdiction.