Samenvatting

Shortly after the target date for transposing the European Mediation Directive into the national law of EU Member States, curiosity over the exact compliance with this obligation seems of a timely fashion. This brief account will present the implementation of the Mediation Directive in two New Member States of the European Union, Hungary and Romania. The approach followed aims to provide specific circumstances for assessing the implementation of the Mediation Directive in legal systems with no well-established mediation practice. For this purpose first the transposition of the Mediation Directive will be presented in two key areas: ensuring the quality of and recourse to mediation. This will be followed by the presentation of the practical experiences learnt from previous experiments and pilot projects. By combining the above-mentioned two angles, attention will be drawn to specific circumstances that are necessary for a well-coordinated implementation of the Mediation Directive, and on which the viability of mediation in these countries depends.