Business updates

A Memorandum on the Need for a Private Mediation Legal Framework was officially presented by Mr. Azim Currimjee, Vice-President of the MCCI, during a press conference held on 8 December 2015. The Memorandum will be officially communicated to the State Law Office and other relevant public authorities in an endeavour to encourage Government to adopt a legal framework for private mediation and to promote greater awareness and use of mediation among professionals and business operators.

The Memorandum, which was elaborated by members of the MARC (MCCI Arbitration and Mediation Center) Commission for Strategy and Development, purports to propose a legal framework which better defines issues such as confidentiality, the procedure for recognition and enforcement of mediation settlement agreements, the ethical conduct of mediation proceedings, and the mediator's ethics.

Mr. Patrick Van Leynseele, a MARC Mediation and Arbitrator who also participated in the drafting of the Memorandum intervened during the conference to emphasise the importance of having a strong legal framework in place to secure proper practice of mediation.

Mediation is an out-of-court dispute settlement mechanism which developed countries around the world has been using successfully for the past two decades to resolve various kinds of disputes, in particular business and commercial disputes. Major mediation centers, such as the Centre de Médiation et d'Arbitrage de Paris, claim that the success rate of mediation is as high as 95%.

Advantages of mediation include that it takes usually less time than arbitration or litigation and involves lower costs. Moreover, the process enables parties to reach an agreement on solutions which could not be achieved through an adjudicative process such as arbitration or litigation and which would not therefore be available through the making of an arbitral award or a judicial decision.