Civil Justice 2007 – 2013

The Costs of Non ADR – Surveying and Showing the Actual Costs of Intra-community Commercial Litigation

Background

This is the third project awarded by ADR Center in the Framework of the EU funded “Specific Programme Civil Justice 2007- 2013.The project aims to create a survey that analyzes the cost of not using ADR (Alternative Dispute Resolution, and in particular mediation) in the commercial sector. The survey is to support the validity of Intra-EU mediation, to sensitize and encourage small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), in-house counsel, lawyers, and governments alike to reflect on the importance of ADR, and to inspire further action in this field. Using a survey to scrutinize and deconstruct the costs of not using ADR, i.e., both the micro-economic and the societal consequences of relying exclusively or predominantly on traditional adjudicative processes, is perhaps not an intuitive or obvious concept.By surveying companies within twenty-six Member States of the EU, we will be able to quantify how costly it is for their companies to engage in disputes that result in litigation.

Key activities