Revista da EMERJ - V. 21 - N. 2 - Maio/Agosto - 2019

 R. EMERJ, Rio de Janeiro, v. 21, n. 2, p. 11-39, Maio-Agosto, 2019  30 i) Litigation Rate In order to further inquire into the reasons for the unreasonable length of ordinary civil proceedings in Italy, it is worth recalling that the number of first instance incoming litigious cases per 100,000 inhabitants amounted to 2,613 in 2012. 81 That is a litigation rate higher than in Ger- many (1,961), UK (1,859) and Austria (1,235), lower than in Spain (3,828) and Greece (5,834, which is extraordinarily high compared to all others European countries), and similar to France (2,575). The Italian litigation rate, compared to that of similarly positioned European countries, is half as high. 82 This finding as to Italy might be rather a consequence than a cause of the undue delay of civil proceedings, as debtors who are unwilling to fulfil their obligations can to some extent rely on the duration of proceedings and are comfortable with facing lawsuits. 83 j) Lawyers As the litigation rate is not particularly high in Italy, one has to downgrade a little the role of the high number of lawyers as a key com- ponent in the inefficiency of civil proceedings. Of course, this is not to say that the number of lawyers is insignificant in this context. Although a selfregulated body, the legal profession has not been very successful in controlling admissions. As of 2012, Italy has the third highest number of lawyers among the countries of the Council of Europe: 226,222, that amounts to circa 379 per 100,000 inhabitants 84 (in Germany they are 200 per 100,000 inhabitants, in France 85, in Greece 380, in Spain 285, in incoming cases, particularly in the years 2010 and 2011, due both to the increase of court taxes that litigants are required to pay to initiate the proceedings, and the Italian Mediation Act 2010 (decreto legislativo no. 28 of 2010), which provides that mediation has compulsory to be sought prior to the commencement of proceedings in a significant number of dis- putes. For further remarks on this point, s. R. Caponi , Italian Civil Justice System: Most Significant Innovations in the Last Years (2009– 2012), in: O.G. Chase, E. Hershkoff, L. Silberman, Y. Taniguchi, V. Varano, A. Zuckerman (eds.), 2012, p. 137 ff.; G. Pailli , N. Trocker , Italy’s New Law on Mediation in Civil and Commercial Matters, ZZPInt, 18 (2013), p. 75ff. 81 Cf. CEPEJ , Report on European Judicial Systems, p. 202, table 9.4. 82 For an inquiry into the causes of litigation in Italy, dating back to the 1990’s but still useful, s. S. Pellegrini , La litigiosità in Italia, Giuffrè, 1997. 83 On this point s. D. Marchesi , Litiganti, avvocati e magistratura, Il Mulino, 2003,p. 71 ff.: “pathological component of civil justice demand”. 84 CEPEJ , Report on European Judicial Systems, p. 377, table 12.1. The highest number of lawyers is in Luxembourg; the second highest is in Greece.