Presentation of e-MEDIATION platform at BCCI

At BCCI, the presentation of an electronic mediation platform under the “e-MEDIATION project: promoting ICT tools to cross-border disputes resolution” was held.

The event was launched by the President of the Bulgarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry Tsvetan Simeonov who welcomed the participants. “We continue the Chamber’s activity to promote out-of-court resolution of commercial disputes,” he said. “Mediation as one of the means to find a way out of a conflict which has arisen between businesses is a method used before the age of the Internet. We are now inviting businesses to use every opportunity to avoid going to court, including e-mediation offered on the electronic platform developed by the project partners: Law and Internet Foundation, BCCI, and Dextro Research Ltd.”

Representatives of the business, the sectorial organizations, mediators and university students took part in the event.

The advantages and challenges of electronic mediation were presented by Miryana Kalcheva, Member of the Board of Directors of BCCI, and Eliza Nikolova, President of the Professional Association of Mediators in Bulgaria.

Dilyana Petkova, Expert at the Law and Internet Foundation, presented the e-MEDIATION project, its goals and objectives, as well as what has been achieved so far, stressing that the e-mediation platform is a technical solution – a continuation of the digitalization of the Arbitration Court at BCCI and the Mediation Center to it.

Gabriela Dimitrova, Director “International Cooperation” at BCCI, demonstrated the platform to the participants in the event step by step: applying for a mediation procedure, registration, selecting a mediator, holding joint and individual meetings, providing documents, including a lawyer/counsellor for each of the parties, communicating within the platform, signing an agreement.

The security and the requirement for the parties, representatives of Bulgarian or foreign companies, to have a digital signature in order to verify the identity of the participants in the mediation were discussed.

BCCI will organize more events to promote the platform and the work of the e-MEDIATION project in Varna, Plovdiv and Sofia.