Study trip to the Netherlands - 28 August - 1 September 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 the Kingdom of the Netherlands from 28 August to 1 September 2022.
The purpose of the visit was to gain insight into the alternative dispute resolution system in the Netherlands. The study trip included a visit to institutions responsible for designing and implementing the system of court-annexed and out-of-court mediation and institutions conducting training on court-annexed mediation.
In the Netherlands, each court has a section for out-of-court dispute resolution i.e. a mediation department. These departments are staffed by certified mediators, and not judges of the court. All cases are considered eligible for an attempt to resolve it by mediation. Therefore, the training of judges always includes a mediation training. Presentations were delivered by judges, ministerial employees, trainers involved in the training of judges and mediators. Up to one million cases a year are resolved by informal mediation in the Netherlands, about 200,000 cases by private mediation and 3,000-4,000 cases by court-annexed mediation.
The Netherlands has no particular problems with the efficiency of courts or the length of court proceedings - only 1% of respondents cite speed of proceedings as the reason for using mediation; as much as 43% cite the fact that in regular court proceedings, due to the given rules of procedure, it is not possible to produce a result that would be satisfactory for any of the parties.
Mediation is not an unknown in the Netherlands but an established part of the dispute resolution system, with 800 professional mediators involved.
To compare the observations from the Netherlands with what should be applied in Croatia, one could say that the issue of efficiency is more pronounced in Croatia.
After completing the study trip, the participants reached the following conclusions: the judicial system can be improved by pairing each problem with a solution favourable for the parties. The court is requested to resolve a problem that can be resolved in different ways. Pending an appropriate response to a given problem, the idea of introducing more ways of resolving disputes in the system we call the justice system can be implemented.