ELI President Diana Wallis at the European Day on Mediation in Madrid

19.01.2017

On 18 January 2017, President Diana Wallis gave a speech on the occasion of the European Day on Mediation. The event was held at the Spanish General Council of the Judiciary in Madrid.

The focus of the event was on mediation – a topic which enjoys a high profile due to its promotion by the Council of Europe and the European Union. According to the organiser, more than one hundred participants, mostly coming from Spain, attended the event and represented various legal backgrounds such as judges and mediators.

On this occasion, Diana Wallis emphasised the importance of mediation and justice, which is the “subject matter of a joint project between ELI and the ENCJ”. She said: "never more than in our current times have we needed a mediation mind set; an ability to listen to one another rather than to pursue conflict. The political and legal worlds are linked and we could hope that this linkage would be positive." Diana Wallis encouraged the solving of disputes "in more imaginative ways, other than through a binary choice of one side being right and the other being wrong." Apart from Diana Wallis, Nuria Diaz Abad, a member of the General Council of the Spanish Judiciary and President of the European Network of Councils of Justice (RECJ), spoke about the RECJ’s work on mediation.

Further information about the event is available here.

For more details about the ELI-ENCJ please follow this link.