Position Paper. Excessive Mediation Seriously Harms Consumers: Why the New Mediation Law Should Not Apply to Disputes Between Consumers and Professionals
Automatically translated summary. The full text is available in Romanian.
On 27 June 2025, the Parliament of the Republic of Moldova approved in first reading a draft law on mediation and the status of the mediator. A position paper by the Independent Think Tank “Expert-Grup” argues that consumer disputes with traders and service providers should be excluded from its scope.
The draft reintroduces mandatory attendance at a mediation session before civil and labour disputes reach court, with no exception for consumers. The claimant would pay 10% of the minimum wage, about MDL 630 in 2026, for what is merely an information session, while one third of the population lives in absolute poverty. Actual mediation would start only after a paid contract with the mediator.
Free court mediation, introduced in 2017, was abolished in 2021: of 43,500 processes, only 1,165 (under 3%) ended in a settlement. The proposed threshold, about EUR 44,000, is relatively higher than in major European states. In France the information session is free, ordered by a judge and mandatory only for certain disputes under EUR 5,000. In Germany mediation is voluntary, though judges lead a compulsory conciliation hearing.
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