Judicial conciliation in civil procedure of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia

ENFor a long time in many countries, including Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, one believed that the major objective of the law on civil procedure is to ensure a sufficient implementation of private law and, alongside, to protect material subjective rights, if any were violated. Mean while, conciliation of the parties was not treated with adequate attention, the legislators did not strive to set forth in the sources of law of civil procedure any certain means encouraging the parties to conciliate, the courts had not been granted any specific rights meant for conci liation of the parties. Recently the situation started to change: ideas started to be developed that conciliation of the parties is better than a judicial decision adopted in particular case and that the judge must first of all try to conciliate the parties to the dispute. Moreover, one tried to find more and more benefits of judicial conciliation. Most often experts say that a contract of compromise between the parties, unlike a judicial decision, helps to preserve economic and social relations of the parties, as it is concluded by means of compromise, while the purpose of the private law namely is preservation and development of legal relations of the parties, not their termination. By the same, peaceful resolution of a dispute helps to save the time both of the courts, and persons who participate in the case, as well as to reduce workload of courts and proce dural expenses. When the parties reach an agreement, a greater possibility exist that the norms of the contract of compromise shall be effected benevolently and no procedure of forced execution shall be needed. Besides, conciliation of the parties results in a number of positive social and psychological aspects: stress is reduced, the parties feel that they have more powers, civil society becomes more developed.