Enhancement of mediation as an alternative to court-based dispute settlement

 The overall objective of the project according is to ensure better access to justice through the development of Alternative Dispute Resolution.
The project will seek to reach the following objectives:
• Improve the legal framework for the development of mediation in Croatia. As the project will seek to revise the entire system for mediation, it is essential to ensure that the legal framework corresponds to the new structural framework. Therefore the project will provide assistance to revise the existing legal acts on mediation, but will also facilitate the access to mediation through the definition of standard contractual clauses establishing mediation preferably to court-based settlement for dispute resolution in civil and commercial contracts;
• Improve the structural framework for the functioning of in-court and out-of-courts mediation centres by establishing mechanisms for the functioning of in-court mediation centres (following the model developed in the pilot courts), improving the functioning of out-of-court mediation centres and establishing a national register for mediators;
• Develop a training strategy to train trainers and conduct basic and advanced training sessions In order to encourage a continuous and in-depth training of mediators and ensure that they are constantly aware of new evolutions, practice and theory of mediation, the project will design a curriculum for a Train the Trainer seminar building on existing experiences in Croatia and bringing in the experiences from other EU Member states.