ELECTRONIC ARBITRATION AS A MEANS OF RESOLVING TOURIST DISPUTES 551 the territory of the European Union, that goes beyond the traditional systems for overcoming disputes based on the adversary system. In the field of consumer affairs, which regulates the conflicts that may arise between a consumer or user and a businessman or professional, with the aim of seeking, as far as possible, the necessary balance between the parties, we can find the most immediate origin of these mechanisms in the Commission’s Green Paper of 16 November 1993. The purpose of this document was to design a legal framework capable of ensuring the effectiveness of the rules on consumer protection, stressing the importance that these alternative dispute resolution systems could have in this respect. In the case of Spain, it included arbitration17. At this stage, on 14 February 1996, the Commission presented a communication18 clearly supporting ADRs in consumer disputes. The reason is clearly stated in the first part of the communication, where the problem that these instruments try to combat is indicated, such as the disproportion between the economic volume of the case and the cost of a judicial process. The Member States must therefore seek to reconcile the obligation to provide justice without discriminationand the constraints on the budget of the competent administration. Thus, for disputes (especially cross-border disputes) involving small amounts (also known as small claims), the system proposed by these alternative techniques is very appropriate, since their low cost and great speed are very well suited to the requirements of such disputes, preventing many disputes that share these characteristics from remaining unresolved. The Commission Communication of 30 March 1998 is along the same lines. At this very moment, the first of the two texts around which the general system has been pivoting recently regarding the alternative resolution of consumer disputes in the Community is emerging. We are referring to the Commission Recommendation on the principles applicable to the bodies responsible for out-of-court settlement of consumer disputes, which focuses on procedures that can be resolved by the intervention of a third party proposing or imposing a solution – as we can remember from heterocompositive methods. The principles to be preached by these bodies, such as independence, transparency, contradiction, effectiveness, legality, freedomand the possibility of representation, are set out here. 17 OLIVENCIA RUIZ, M., Arbitraje: una justicia alternativa, Córdoba, Ed. Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Córdoba, pp. 7 & ff. 18 Communication from the Commission concerning an action plan on consumer access to justice and the settlement of consumer disputes in the internal market of 14 February 1996 (COM(96) 13 final).
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