CEDR_to_spearhead_mediation_mission_across_Europe,_says_chairman_Lord_Hurd_

The Centre for Dispute Resolution (CEDR) will lead a consortium of European alternative dispute resolution (ADR) providers helping the European Commission to develop mediation across...The Centre for Dispute Resolution (CEDR) will lead a consortium of European alternative dispute resolution (ADR) providers helping the European Commission to develop mediation across the EU, former foreign secretary and new CEDR chairman Lord Hurd revealed this week in an exclusive interview with the Gazette.The project comes with the second part of EU funding, the first part of which CEDR used to compile a complete list of EU ADR providers.

CEDRs European shift follows its development of multi-lingual ADR training materials, created in association with City firm DLA and accountants KPMG last year.

CEDR, assisted by French, Belgian, Dutch and Italian ADR providers, will recommend common training standards for ADR, ethical codes, and the relationships with court systems of EU member states to the Commission.

The project will end in a two-day conference in Paris in May this year, for delegates including judges and justice ministers from all 15 EU member states.

In an interview discussing his role as chairman of CEDR having replaced Sir Alex Jarratt in December Lord Hurd said there is plenty of scope for the global use of CEDR; indeed, the globalisation of mediation was a missionary endeavour, he added.

Lord Hurd said he was excited by the growing use of mediation on a global scale; he cited the recent mediation of the pointless war between Eritrea and Ethiopea as evidence of its practical ability to overcome larger world problems, adding that the UN secretary-general is essentially a mediator.

Lord Hurd acknowledged that mediation does not always work attempts by him to mediate within the Tory party during the last Parliament yielded very indifferent result, he conceded, adding: Some people in politics like to be extreme, some people just enjoy it that way.He said serving in Margaret Thatchers cabinet had required mediation skills, not least in mediating between her and foreign colleagues.

But modern diplomacy has much to learn from mediation, the former diplomat who served in China, Italy and the United Nations said: Modern diplomats can learn from mediation because modern diplomacy has become say in the Council of Ministers in Brussels, where negotiations take place around a green baize table a looser and less rigorous art; and some of the basic protocols that would have been observed even during the Congress of Vienna in 1814, have gone.

Lord Hurd said the role of mediation in society can only grow: We are becoming more litigious, and things like family disputes, which would not really come to the courts in the old days, are now doing so.

But often thrashing it around in the courts is not the answer.

So mediation offers a way.

He said he does not harbour further political ambitions at the moment: I have a rag bag of a life: two jobs in the City, chair of CEDR, novelist, duties in the House of Lords; but the advantage of being semi-retired is that you dont have to do anything that doesnt interest you.

Jeremy Fleming