Minister of Justice Blerim Bexheti and Dutch ambassador Marriët Schuurman signed on Monday in Skopje a letter of intent, thus marking the start of the project "Support to Improving the Implementation of Mediation in Macedonia."

The project aims at detecting shortcomings in existing laws and institutional mechanisms on mediation, boosting mediation capacities and raising awareness on the opportunities enabled by mediation in Macedonia.

Macedonia in the past five years since establishing the mediation system, Minister Bexheti said, has been addressing serious challenges, instead of making any progress.

"The number of cases in which mediation is applied is extremely low and the number of successfully completed mediation cases is insignificant," the Minister stated adding that this had been underlined also by the European Commission in its progress report on Macedonia.

In an attempt to locate the obstacles for mediation in Macedonia to be successfully activated, Bexheti pointed out the need of analysing relevant legislation and its implementation.

"The project is expected to result in establishing an institutional environment favourable for sustainable development of mediation in Macedonia," he stated.

Ambassador Schuurman said that there were more than 5.000 registered mediators in the Netherlands and that thousands of cases were being solved through mediation.

"The Netherlands has been involved in the mediation process in Macedonia since 2005 by financing a regional project to establish and promote mediation as an alternative method for solving disputes," she noted.

The law on mediation in Macedonia was adopted in 2006 in a bid to reduce the number of court cases and to unload the judiciary from unnecessary cases.