Samenvatting

This diptych consists of two articles: the first, The Rise and Fall of Mediation in Italy, by Elisabetta Silvestri, analyzes the way in which the Italian Constitutional Court has recently (October-December 2012) struck down a Decree that had introduced mandatory mediation in a wide range of civil procedure areas in Italy. The second article, The EU’s Italian Job, by Rob Jagtenberg, discusses the way in which the Advocate-General with the Court of Justice of the European Union has dealt with the request for a preliminary ruling on the compatibility of the same Decree with European law (Opinion of 19 April 2013). It appears that at both Court levels, the subject was perceived as too risky to judge on the merits: mandatory mediation thus ends as a potato too hot to hold in a court’s hand.