Online Negotiation in the EU, Current Experiences, Challenges, and New Scenarios

This study aims at exploring the application of Online negotiation – as part of the Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) regime in general – for resolving civil disputes in the EU. Within the last decades the notion of Online negotiation (hereinafter, e-negotiation) has received an extensive amount of scholarly attention. Previous studies mostly define e-negotiation as a ‘fourth party’ that facilitates a dispute resolution process for other three parties – namely, negotiators and the human facilitator – with the assistance of the ICT tools. The fourth party embodies a range of facilities such as organizing information, sending automatic responses, and modifying written communications in a more polite and constructive manner (i.e., blocking foul language). At a more advanced level, e-negotiation systems may also monitor performance, schedule meetings, clarify interests, and prioritize them for the parties to increase transparency and efficiency of dispute resolution procedure. Application of advanced e-negotiation provides the parties with an opportunity to have access to a neutral, super intelligent, and secure platform that assists them in reaching an agreement in an expedited and cost-effective manner. In recent years, e-negotiation has been used in a broad context covering litigious and non-litigious processes such as any alternative model of dispute resolution. So far, however, there has been little discussion about the status of using e-negotiation in dispute resolution in the EU. This study, therefore, investigates the most used practices in implementing e-negotiation for resolving civil disputes in the Union. Further, it critically analyses the EU ODR platform and its function in relation to the practice of e-negotiation for settling consumer disputes. Finally, this paper focuses on the lessons learnt from the application of e-negotiation for civil dispute resolution in EU and provides several important implications for the future of improvement in citizens’ access to justice through the application of effective e-negotiation models.