Mediation Unknown To Macedonians

The practice of mediation as a way of avoiding more expensive and sometimes painstakingly long count procedures is still not well known in Macedonia, the visiting Dutch Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin and his Macedonian host Mihajlo Manevski agreed on Monday.

Both attended at the promotion of a mediation handbook in Skopje, a book that is supposed to explain the advantages of this kind of dispute settlement.

“With the use of mediation we hope that our courts will have less work and thus become more expedient,” Manevski told press.

Ballin is paying a one-day visit to Macedonia.  The visit aims at exchanging experiences in judicial reforms, reform of the penitentiary system, fight against human trafficking and respect of human rights, Macedonia's Justice Ministry said in a press release.

Turning to Macedonia's EU accession, Ballin said that he can personally testify that Macedonia “has done a significant progress in the past 20 years” and that it is now ready to launch accession talks.

He assessed that the ongoing justice reforms that the country has to make as a precondition for its EU entry are “going well”.

Both countries' ministers signed letters of intent for future cooperation in this field.

Macedonia also has a chance to get a date for the start of its EU accession talks on 7 December when the EU council is set to convene.

However, the long term EU member, Greece has threatened to block this if there is no breakthrough in the ongoing Athens-Skopje talks over their 18 years-long name dispute.