Study trip to Portugal - 2-6 May 2022

​Within the project "Reinforcing the system of court-annexed mediation", which is co-financed by the NFM (Norwegian Financial Mechanism), a group consisting of four civil servants of Croatia's Ministry of Justice and Public Administration, four judges, professors from the Zagreb Faculty of Law, a representative of the Croatian Mediation Association and a lawyer participated in a study trip to Portugal from 2 to 6 May 2022.

The purpose of the visit was to gain insight into the system of alternative dispute resolution in Portugal, which included a visit to training institutions as well as institutions engaged in the design and implementation of court-annexed and out-of-court mediation systems.  
In Portugal, regular courts do not use mediation, although there is a legal possibility for this. There is also private mediation, as well as private mediation training centers. The participants of the study trip visited the court of first instance in Lisbon, where local judges gave them a detailed insight into their work and the everyday problems they face.

Given the need for disputes to be resolved in schemes that are not strictly formal, peace courts (juzgados de paz) have been established in Portugal as separate courts for the resolution of disputes worth up to 15 thousand euros, first of all amicably i.e. by conciliation. If the mediation procedure fails, a peace judge (in approximately 30% of cases) renders a decision which he briefly explains. These courts (tribunals) are staffed by peace judges who do not possess the same qualifications as regular judges. Peace judges are elected by the relevant state council, as opposed judges elected by the Supreme Council of the Judiciary. The experience of resolving disputes in this manner has so far been positive. During the visit to the Supreme Council of the Judiciary, the manner of electing judges was presented to participants, as well as the overall functioning of the third pillar of government in Portugal, and a presentation was held on this topic in the Portuguese Ministry of Justice.

Lessons learned from Portugal are probably not directly applicable in Croatia given the different starting points, but are valuable in terms of what the task of the justice system is and how it handles it.

An important observation relates to the selection of priorities - each type of procedure should have appropriate treatment according to its value or type of dispute, both at the level of of individual cases and the level of dispute resolution system as a whole.