Minister Kuburović: Significant efforts to promoting mediation in Serbia

Today, Justice Minister Nela Kuburović participated in the Eight International Judicial Forum in St. Petersburg where she noted that much was being done to promote mediation and alternative means of dispute resolution which reduced the courts’ work load and saved time, cut expenses and saved other important resources. As an honorary guest at the Forum participating the “Arbitration practice, alternative dispute resolution” panel, the Minister reminded that the first Mediation Act had been adopted in Serbian in 2005, while the Arbitration Act had been adopted a year later. “After ten years, there is the need to raise awareness about the options available through mediation that would improve the practice and the judicial framework. Serbia is a small country of seven million inhabitants and over two million on-going disputes before the courts. This indicates the degree of needed improvement in the alternative ways of dispute resolution”, Kuburović said.

She highlighted the importance of the initiative of the High Court of Cassation, the High Judicial Council and the Ministry of Justice to issue Joint Guidelines on How to Promote Mediation in the Republic of Serbia which served to encourage the courts to focus their attention on how they organised their work in order to support mediation. “Owing to the Guidelines, we made significant progress in 2017 with three times more cases resolved than in 2016. However, this does not suffice considering the actual numbers and the ratio involved: around 100 cases to approximately two million disputes”, Kuburović noted.

The Serbian Minister of Justice exchanged experiences with her colleagues from Russia, the United States of America, Brazil, China and other countries, who also participated in the Forum and in whose countries progressive solutions were being implemented. All of them pointed out that given the present age of information technology, legal professional needed to move into the same direction in terms of digitalisation and developing platforms for on-line dispute resolutions.

In addition to having participated in the Forum, Kuburović met with her counterpart, the Minister of Justice of the Russian Federation Aleksandr Konovalov.