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Senator Filippo Berselli
President of the Justice Committee of the Italian Senate
Ankara, March 13, 2009
VIDEO MESSAGE

"Dear Presidents, representatives of the Turkish institutions, illustrious speakers, colleagues and friends,

on behalf of the Justice Committee of the Italian Senate, that I have the honour of presiding, I give my kind regards to all those who are taking part to this important International Conference, concerning civil and commercial mediation at the Auditorium of the Union of the Turkish Bars.

Unfortunately I cannot be in Ankara with you today because of my institutional commitments; however, I am glad to address all of you with this message for two main reasons.

First, I am delighted that the European Commission has chosen an Italian company, ADR Center SpA, as the leader of this important project titled “Better Access to Justice in Turkey”, in whose context this conference is taking place.

The second is that some days ago the Italian Senate approved an important reform of the civil process which contains also rules regulating and promoting the recourse to mediation in civil and commercial disputes.

These rules were the subject of a scrupulous debate within the Italian Parliament. Through them, the Italian Parliament wants to abide by the rules of the European directive on mediation of 21st May 2008. With this speech, I hope, therefore, to give an important   contribution to my Turkish colleagues, with particular reference to the bill recently approved in the Justice Committee by Ankara Parliament which could be definitely approved by the Assembly within the end of 2009.

Back to the rules approved by the Italian Senate, the Italian government should adopt within 6 months one or more decrees that will follow the following principles and rules. Below I list and summarize the most important ones:

1) mediation will focus on disputes about disposable rights, without precluding access to justice;

2) mediation service providers should be professional and independent organizations

3) mediation will be regulated through the establishment, at the Ministry of Justice, of a register of mediation organizations, supervised by that Ministry;

4) the Ministry of Justice will establish the requirements for  an enrolling in to the Register;

5) the Bar Associations can establish, within the court system, their own mediation organizations;

6) the mediation organizations enrolled in the Register can offer mediation services also online;

7) mediator fees will be set taking into account also the success of the mediation;

8) the lawyer should inform his client about the possibility of resorting to a mediation organization;

9) there will be tax incentives for those who resort to mediation;

10)the judge shall be able to impose expenses on the party who refused a mediator proposal which the judge will consider to have been reasonable if this proposal corresponds to the content of the judge decision;

11) the mediation process shall last no more than 4 months;

12) the mediator settlement will constitute enforceable title;

I’m aware that mediation regulation is one of the specific topics of this International conference. Nevertheless as jurist and a politician I decide to talk about it right now because this is a very important topic. In other words, as the experience of the great majority of civil law countries show, in the absence of appropriate regulation mediation does not seem to be producing significant results in favouring settlement of civil and commercial disputes.

Before coming to the end, I would like to remind all of us not only the importance of effective and efficient access to the justice, but also the complexity of reaching this goal. In other words, it would be a serious mistake to believe that mediation regulation alone could fix the problems of justice. In addition to mediation and legal aid, which are the subjects of this EC project, judicial organization and access to the legal profession are the two other key topics worthy of immediate attention in order to improve the relationship between citizens and the State to which they belong. A very long and challenging work is thus ahead us.

I wish all of you a pleasant and productive conference, and in particular I hope that the comparison between different mediation models, from the USA to various EU countries, might help our Turkish colleagues to define and draft an important in the path towards the approximation of Turkish law with the EU legal system.

To you all, a very warm “bye bye” from Rome."

Sen. Filippo Berselli