Abstrakt

Introduction Directive 2008/52/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 21 May 2008 regulates the criteria on certain aspects of mediation in civil and commercial matters in countries of European Union. That significant legal intervention was aimed at improving access to judicial system and “facilitating the use of alternative methods to settle disputes, promoting amicable settlement of disputes by encouraging people to use mediation and ensuring a balanced relationship between mediation and court proceeding”1. The directive does not exclude a possibility for Member States to determine cases in which recourse to mediation is mandatory. Taking into consideration an increasing and effective use of international mediation, Scottish Government shall use an active approach towards such effective alternative and initiate its wider use in disputes in family law. “Scandinavian” experience shows not only how effective the mediation is but also it may provide necessary guidelines on how to implement the method to resolve conflicts in areas of contemporary Scottish family law. Especially when the court system has substantial backlogs and due to that fact issues, on average, around 10 000 divorce decrees annually2.  The given figures show how important it is for the Scottish Government to implement more effective method of resolving conflicts in order to relieve the civil courts and more importantly, to serve better the interests of parties, their children and society as a whole. There are a few notions of mediations, particularly the notion of family mediation presented by experts and official...