THE "BENEFITS OF MEDIATION IN DEALING WITH CONFLICTS" CONFERENCE/CIPRIAN FRANDES: "The proposals concerning the mediation of criminal lawsuits are outside the scope of the law on mediation"

The proposals which were made concerning criminal mediation fall outside the scope of the law on mediation, and within that of the Code of Criminal Procedure, Ciprian Frandes, advisor to Deputy Alina Gorghiu explained. "It has been discussed that a lawsuit can cause a new emotional shock to the victims of criminal aggressions and series of proposals pertaining to that issue have been submitted, such as resorting to psychological counseling. All of these new proposals are welcome, but they do not fall within the scope of the law of mediation, but rather under the Criminal Procedure Code", he said.

Referring to the fact that Ciprian Frandes called the fact that in criminal cases, victims are allowed to withdraw their complaints and the parties are allowed to make up, but the mediation of these cases is not allowed, called these facts "absurd". The requirement of participating in the sessions of information about mediation in the criminal lawsuits will only come into effect next year, after the coming into effect of the Criminal Procedure Code.

Ciprian Frandes considers that the new regulations, which make it mandatory to participate in the session of information about mediation, starting with February 15th, are needed not just for relieving the courts and to provide a "dose of oxygen" to the business environment, as well as to increase the awareness about it within the members of the public. It is possible that the decision to postpone the sanctions provided for those who would not attend the session of information about mediation before taking their disagreements to court, may have been adopted to give the population the time needed to get adequately informed about the new regulations, Ciprian Alina Gorghiu's advisor, Ciprian Frandes said.