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The Concept on Strengthening European Union (EU) Mediation and Dialogue Capacities from 2009 proposes a series of measures to increase EU capabilities in these areas, noting the benefits of adopting mediation as a foreign policy tool for the EU. In parallel, the publication of the Directive 2008/52/EC ‘on certain aspects of mediation in civil and commercial matters’ aimed at promoting the use of mediation to facilitate better access to justice, more freedom and increased security. Meanwhile, commercial and dispute mediation have seen much development in standard-setting and professionalisation.

Within this context, mediatEUr organised the roundtable ‘International Peace Mediation Standards? Reviewing the Field, Charting the Way Ahead’ on 21 May 2013, to review standard-setting efforts in other mediation fields, and to explore the applicability of standards in international peace mediation. The meeting is part of the project ‘Towards a Framework for a European Institute of Peace’, entrusted to mediatEUr by the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and aimed to generate options for professionalising peace mediation, and to review the implications for the work of EU actors in this filed, including a potential EIP. More specifically, the roundtable followed four broad objectives:

  1. Explore applicability of existing mediation standards for the peace mediation field.
  2. Understand the challenges and benefits of having standards in peace mediation.
  3. Identify a basis for the European Institute for Peace when operating in the field.
  4. Generate cooperation among European actors on mediation standard setting.

The meeting was informed by Senior Vice President of the United States Insitute of Peace (USIP), Pamela Aall; Irena Vanenkova, Executive Director of the International Mediation Institute (IMI); and Dr Simon Mason, head of the Mediation Support Team at the Center for Security Studies (CSS).

In 2021, mediatEUr became Conciliation Resources EU/mediatEUr.