Many of you now plan your participation of ODR Forum in Prague from Wednesday 27 June to Friday 29 June. You might consider attending an ICANN meeting in the first half of the same week (ICANN meeting will be held in Prague from Sunday 24 June to Friday 29 June). Attendance of the ICANN meeting is free of charge. ICANN meeting in Prague will be interesting mainly because it will be the first meeting after the end of time window for filing applications for new top-level domains (new gTLDs).

Please find below a list of 10 issues which in my view describe how the future cross-border ODR system should look like in order to be fair for buyers (especially consumers) and sellers and at the same time workable in practice. All these issues have been discussed at various fora. It is certain that there are potential risks associated with any global online system and cross-border ODR is by no means an exception. We need to identify all such potential risks and discuss publicly the best available resolutions. The following are in my view  the ten basic issues:

Last week I participated in a public meeting organized by US administration in Washington DC on cross-border ODR, UNCITRAL process and the ODR Exchange pilot I have been coordinating. The discussion was accessible online as well.

Tentative programme of the ODR Forum in Prague has been posted on this website under Agenda. We believe the programme is exciting, it should combine presentation of new ideas and concepts with a lot of discussion. We hope it will be fun for all of us who will participate at this venue. The programme is not yet final (although it is almost final) and if you have any suggestions or proposals or corrections please email me at zloebl@odrexchange.com.

The following drafts were just distributed to the participants of the cross-border ODR pilot:

-          ECRI ODR communication standard; and

-          Principles of user interface of ODR Exchange

This is a great video put together by Consumer Protection British Columbia profiling their new ODR service: 

Learn more at http://resolvemydispute.ca

New year 2012 promises to be quite active year for online dispute resolution. Several significant international initiatives in ODR should achieve their first material outcomes next year. It is possible and desirable that UNCITRAL WG III comes to a rough consensus on the draft ODR Rules for cross-border low value high volume e-commerce disputes, both B-C and B-B and also on minimum prescribed criteria for ODR providers and neutrals.

I am happy to inform you that earlier this week a website of a pilot on cross-border ODR infrastructure (ODR EXCHANGE) was launched at www.odrexchange.com. The purpose of the pilot is to discuss, comment and verify proposed principles and specifications of the backbone ODR technology which would enable ODR providers, consumer centers and trustmark programs around the world to provide their services across borders. The participation in the pilot is open to interested ODR practitioners, academics and regulators.

European Commission published on 29 November two legislative proposals:

(i) Directive on Consumer ADR establishing minimum standards for ADR schemes and requiring EU Member States the provision of ADR services for resolving B2C disputes. 

(ii) Regulation on Consumer ODR establishing an a pan-European ODR Platform that will coordinate ADR schemes and become a single point of entrance for resolving online (cross-border) B2C disputes. 

"...the European Commission unveiled today a package of legislative proposals to ensure that all EU consumers can solve their problems without going to court, regardless of the kind of product or service that the contractual dispute is about and regardless of where they bought it in the European single market (that is, at home or abroad). For consumers shopping online from another EU country, the Commission wants to create an EU-wide single online platform, which will allow to solve contractual disputes entirely online within 30 days.