European Directive On Commercial Mediation: What It Provides And What It Doesn’T

Abstract

The process of regional homogenization began with a call, in 1998, for the European Commission to issue a Green Paper on the use of mediation in civil and commercial matters. The directive requires states to provide for enforcement of agreements that result from mediation. This is particularly useful in a region of many languages and laws, almost all of whose civil justice systems are enshrined in a civil code. Each civil code will now grant judges the power to recognize settlement agreements obtained through mediation to be enforceable contracts. The directive achieves its main goal: it recognizes and establishes uniform judicial treatment of cross-border commercial dispute resolution throughout the European market. This is a signal achievement-one that has frankly eluded the United States, whose various jurisdictions have failed to embrace the UMA and instead have adopted a hodgepodge of mainly court-initiated principles addressing the issues that the directive considers. Keywords: commercial mediation; European directive; regional homogenization