Moldova has undertaken a complex legal and judicial reform recently. An all-embracing Strategy on reform of justice sector for 2011-2016 has been adopted by the Parliament and is being implemented at all levels. Alternative means of dispute resolution shall be promoted in order to raise efficiency of the justice system. One of the goals is to extend the use of ADR by assuring a proper legal framework and promoting ADR among lawyers, judges and businesses.
Mediation is one of the ADR means intended to be popularized in Moldova.
Given the place of mediation within the Justice Sector Reform Strategy and increasing interest to mediation world-wide EBRD has implemented a training lecture for the judges of the courts of the Republic of Moldova.
The training “Commercial Mediation” was organized by ACI Partners Law Office (www.aci.md) together with the National Institute of Justice (www.inj.md).
The training included two full day sessions for two groups of judges on 4-5 December 2014. The speakers at the training were:
- Srdan Simac, Ph.D., judge at Supreme Commercial Court of Croatia,
- Nicolae Clima, Ph.D., judge at Supreme Court of Justice of Moldova,
- Zinaida Guţu, attorney at law, LLM in ADR.
The training turned to be rather interactive; judges have viewed video demonstrating a mediation case and afterwards took part in role-play tasks were each attendee had the possibility to live up the experience of the participants to a mediation procedure. A special emphasis was put on practical issues, benefits of the mediation for judges and disputing parties, procedural questions that my raise with a judge in case the parties decide to mediate.
Judges welcomed the training as a good opportunity to find out the best practices in mediation. As one of the judges put it, he has been rather skeptical about the efficiency of mediation, but following the training he was hoping that mediation would develop as a practical and efficient means of dispute resolution in Moldova which would help a justice system to regain citizens’ trust in the act of justice.
For additional information on the mediation tools in Moldova please contact Cristina Martin, PhD, Arbitrator.
