Since the creation of the Basque Mediation service 25 years ago, more than 130,000 people from the Basque Country have attended, the majority being women. Throughout these years, the service has worked on 27,719 files, 8,277 premediation, 12,330 mediation and 7,112 follow-up.
Eight out of ten families who go to the mediation service reach an agreement
The majority of those who have requested help have reached an agreement after completing mediation, with a total of 9,740 families reaching agreements. But, there is still a 18% who decided to end the mediation. Only in 3% of the cases did the service team consider mediation unfeasible. In this context, the Minister of Social Policies, Beatriz Artolazabal, thanked "the trust placed in the mediation service by thousands and thousands of people who, in difficult times, we have been able to help build bridges in the middle of the storm. Mediation.
Furthermore, the data from this first semester show that a high number of families take responsibility for the agreements reached in mediation. Only in 8.5% of cases does that responsibility fall on lawyers or judges, giving way to a contentious process. During the first years of this service, the majority of cases focused on conflicts arising from the breakup of the couple, separation or divorce. But since 2003 there has been a change in trend and the conflicts have expanded to other family areas. Currently, 12% of cases have to do with other types of disputes other than marital disputes.
Furthermore, the pandemic has played a fundamental role in this service, which has been forced to serve 3,130 people during the confinement period, between March 16 and June 19 of last year, and worked with 563 files.
