Revista da EMERJ - V. 22 - N.1 - Janeiro/Março - 2020

 R. EMERJ, Rio de Janeiro, v. 22, n. 1, p. 11 - 26, Janeiro-Março. 2020  22 or accountants who, perhaps more as a hobby, or for the excite- ment to take on a new professional challenge, take some days off from their ordinary job to solve the cases the institutions assign them. Considering that in Italy the median value of the disputes in mediation is 17,000 € and that the fee (to be shared normally with the mediation provider) is always proportional to the value of the dispute, mediators who can live only on the income produced by their profession can today be counted on the fingers of one hand. The issue of the incentives to mediators is among the dys- functional aspects of the reform. Aprovision that is apparently in favour of the disputant is not in the interest of the resolution in the long term, in that it devalues the mediator’s work. Without good training and effective job gratifications for mediators, it is unlikely that mediation will come of age. THE EXCLUSION OF FAMILY AND LABOUR MATTERS: A REASONABLE CHOICE The reform did not envisage the extension of compulsory mediation to family and labour matters, thus leaving the conci- liative resolution to the effective will of the parties. A strong core of family mediators has been operating in Italy since the Eighties. The world of family mediation functions very differently from that of civil and commercial mediation. Al- though some judges, in the more complicated cases of familial conflict, advised the parties to go to mediation even in the past, it was only in 2006, with the introduction of art. 155.6 of the Civil Code, that judges have been explicitly authorised to facilitate the use of mediation by postponing the issuing of judicial decisions on divorce, in particular when the moral and the material inte- rests of the children are at stake. In these occasions, resorting to mediation helps the interests of minors, while it facilitates open- -ended solutions and multifaceted dialogue. Nevertheless, a problematic aspect in recurring to media- tion in family matters (and also labour matters) should be taken into account, namely the dimension of power within the parties