Online Mediation and Consumer Redress

Pablo Cortes.FORWEB

 

 

 

 

Dr Pablo Cortés from the School of Law at University of Leicester (UK) has been awarded grants by the Nuffield Foundation and the European Commission (2014-2016), to conduct research on the impact that online dispute resolution is having on civil mediation and on consumer redress in the EU.
The Nuffield Foundation’s grant finances a research project that evaluates the main consumer ADR schemes operating in Italy, Spain and the UK. These schemes are currently adapting their processes to the European legislation and to a society progressively interacting in the digital sphere. Qualitative research based on interviews are being conducted with stakeholders representing ADR schemes, technology intermediaries, consumers, businesses, and policy makers in order to extract and contrast best practices that will inform existing ADR schemes, which will soon be legally required to process complaints online.
The European project is part of a research grant awarded by the European Commission’s Civil Justice Program. This grant was awarded to a consortium coordinated by Salamanca University and formed by a number of European universities (Leicester, Leiria, ESCE-Paris and Urbino). By its conclusion the project would have designed model online mediation procedures suited for resolving cross-border disputes in the EU, outlined a blueprint for European legislation on online mediation and drafted a European code of conduct for online mediators.