Arlene McCarthy, deputising for the author. − Mr President, I welcome the fact that we are having an opportunity to discuss mediation and progress. The oral question has been tabled because we want to make progress on mediation and speed up its use across the EU.

We know that mediation, if used extensively, can result in significant savings of time and money. Going to court is costly; best practice in mediation shows that across Europe there is a 70% success rate with mediation cases, and indeed this rises to 80% if parties voluntarily opt for mediation. Yet only 1% of parties are taking up the mediation option.

The experience in my own Member State is that litigation worth EUR 200 000 took 333 days, costing on average EUR 51 000, whereas evidence shows that mediation would have taken around 87 days and cost a fraction of that sum: EUR 9 000.

Forty-five percent of small businesses tell us that they would not pursue a claim in another EU Member State if it was for less than EUR 50 000 because they would end up paying more in costs than the money they would get back. So the Mediation Directive is a big opportunity for small businesses.

We face a situation that is both puzzling and frustrating. On the one hand we have an increasing body of literature and evidence showing us that, even at a very modest success rate, mediation can generate significant and measurable savings in both time and costs. On the other hand, however, we have a disappointingly low number of mediation cases throughout the EU and this, I believe, is not what the Commission, Parliament and the Council intended.

In Article 1 we drafted the directive’s primary goals as being to facilitate access to alternative dispute resolution and to promote the amicable settlement of disputes by encouraging the use of mediation and, indeed, by ensuring a balanced relationship between mediation and judicial proceedings. So from a legal standpoint, the EU now has a responsibility to act promptly to ensure that those fundamental goals are being met.

The need to do so is particularly urgent at a time of recession, at a time of austerity, at a time when Member States should be concentrating on promoting time-saving and cost-cutting dispute resolution.

The questions we would like the Commissioner to address are: how does the Commission intend to make progress on this issue where we are clearly not meeting the directive’s objective in a speedy way? In particular, how does the Commission intend to make sure that the balanced relationship between mediation and judicial proceedings is actually attained? Does the Commission take the view that the requirement for a balanced relationship implies an obligation on Member States to set and attain a minimum percentage of cases to be mediated in each country, at least perhaps as far as cross-border disputes are concerned? And, if so, what steps is the Commission thinking of taking in the event that a minimum percentage is not set or met?

We very much welcome this debate and the opportunity to hear from the Commission on this very important issue.