Abstract

The interest in the profession of a mediator increased with the popularisation of mediation in Poland. The tendency was supported by the legislator’s liberal defini-tion of requirements for performing this professional function. In the article, we raise issues related to the principles of entering in the register of permanent mediators in Poland. We present the currently applicable legal regulations and we analyse them, focusing on the requirement to have knowledge of mediation and to be skilled in it. This requirement is interpreted in different ways by individual authorities that enter candidates’ names in the register of permanent mediators (presidents of district courts), and its interpretation is also evaluated differently in both Polish literature and case law.
The purpose of the article is to show the areas of legal regulations that require changes and unification, on the basis of analysing the results of statistical research conducted by the authors. It is significant particularly from the perspective of the ongoing discussion on the professionalisation of mediators in Poland, especially in the context of the planned changes and the introduction of the National Register of Mediators. The accomplishment of the task undertaken by the authors is primarily served by the formal and dogmatic method as well as the comparative method used in the statistical research. The purpose of that method was to show discrepancies in interpreting the regulations concerning mediation.

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