Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-09-13-Speech-2-008-000"
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"en.20110913.3.2-008-000"2
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"Madam President, firstly, I would really like to thank my colleagues and the committee staff for supporting my work on this report on mediation. This report was drawn up to check on how the 27 Member States are implementing the 2008 European mediation law and its guidelines. When we drafted this law in 2008, I know that some Members were not convinced of the need for a European directive, but I believe that the hearings and consultations we conducted demonstrated that we do need EU-wide guidelines on mediation.
I am receiving an increasing number of requests for assistance from my constituents who are involved in cross-border disputes: family disputes over custody, access to children and maintenance payments, property, housing problems, and businesses chasing payments they are owed in another EU Member State.
Going to court is costly; in fact, 45% of small businesses said they would not pursue a claim in another EU court if the money owed was less than EUR 50 000, because they would end up paying more in costs. What a massive loss for our small businesses across Europe.
Our findings in drawing up this report demonstrated that mediation is a very valuable tool for consumers and businesses. I think that the message to Member States today is that they need to do more to promote the benefits of mediation. They should provide more training for mediators and encourage the drawing up of voluntary codes of conduct. I believe this is the case because best practice in mediation shows that across Europe, there is a 70% success rate with mediation cases and, in fact, this rises to 80% if the parties voluntarily choose mediation.
However, still only 1% of parties are taking up mediation in Europe. Again, the figures speak for themselves: going through the courts took, on average, an extra 331 to 446 days, involving extra legal costs of between EUR 12 000 and EUR 13 000 to settle the case. The experience in my own Member State is that litigation worth EUR 200 000 took 333 days, costing on average EUR 51 000, where mediation would have taken a mere 87 days and cost a fraction at EUR 9 000.
One mediator told me that last year, he mediated 115 disputes in the UK. He had solved them within one week, and 30 were cross-border. Mediation is therefore a flexible, speedy and cost-effective way to resolve disputes; it allows the parties greater control; it gives them more responsibility in resolving their disputes; and I believe it is especially beneficial in family disputes concerning children, because it can dramatically shorten the period of time required to reach agreement, and this is better for children’s well-being and reduces anxiety, conflict and stress in the family.
To quote another very convincing case: a dispute over an estate and will worth GBP 10 million, involving four parties, three jurisdictions – the UK, Switzerland and France – was solved by a mediator in one day. But by the time they reached mediation, EUR 5 million had already been swallowed up by the courts and lawyers across three different states, and it would have taken another two years to try and solve that problem in court.
So today I want to encourage the Commission and Member States to continue to strengthen and implement the EU law and give consumers and businesses an alternative to costly legal disputes. Given the number of disputed property cases we have in the EU, I would also like to use today as an opportunity to ask the Commission and the Member States to make more use of mediation systems to assist our constituents in disputes such as the numerous cases we have in Spain and Cyprus. Establishing a mediation procedure to bring an end to these costly and lengthy disputes will, of course, increase these citizens’ access to justice.
To conclude, we are largely satisfied with the work of the Member States in implementing this law, even though at the time of drafting, only 17 Member States had transposed the legislation. And we welcome, Commissioner Reding, the fact that you are starting infringement proceedings against nine Member States. We note that some Member States have gone further than the EU guidelines, but we hope that our committee report, based on practitioners’ and users’ views, will provide useful input so that we can better serve our citizens with an affordable and efficient system for access to justice."@en1
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