Peace at Work: An Interview with Raphaël Mortier
In this Peace Dialogues in Luxembourg interview, Raphaël Mortier explores the connections between peace, law and economic life: trust, dignity at work, governance and conflict prevention. Questions by Omid Attar; responses by Raphaël Mortier.
1. Peace through the perspective of business and law
Peace is usually associated with relations between countries or communities. Yet it is also shaped in workplaces and economic relationships through fairness, trust, security and the way disagreements are handled.
Question — Omid Attar
Drawing on your experience as a corporate lawyer and strategic adviser, what does peace mean to you personally? How does your professional experience influence the way you understand peace in everyday and economic life?
Answer — Raphaël Mortier
For me, peace does not mean the absence of disagreement. In a company, interests will naturally differ: those of shareholders, managers, employees, clients, suppliers and public authorities.
So the real question is very simple: what do we do with these disagreements?
After approximately twenty-five years working in law and taxation in Luxembourg, I have learned that it is perfectly possible to be legally right without actually solving the underlying problem.
A legal process may close a case without resolving the conflict that caused it.
I have seen this in taxation, employment relationships, commercial disputes and, today, in corporate governance. Law provides a framework and ultimately a decision. But it does not necessarily make people understand each other.
This is probably what gradually led me towards mediation.
For me, peace in economic life is ultimately based on three fairly simple things: clear rules, trust, and the ability to talk to each other early enough when a problem arises.
2. The corporate lawyer as a builder of trust
An in-house lawyer is often expected to identify legal risks and protect the company. However, a lawyer who understands relationships and conflict may also help prevent mistrust, misunderstandings and disputes before they become legal proceedings.
Question — Omid Attar
Should the role of an in-house lawyer extend beyond legal protection to include building trust and preventing conflict within and around the company? What does a genuinely mediative approach to corporate law look like in practice?
Answer — Raphaël Mortier
Yes. And I can give a concrete example of a commercial dispute.
A client disputed some of the hours charged on an invoice. Instead of requesting a meeting or asking for detailed explanations, the client returned the invoice with parts crossed out and reduced the total amount.
For the business that had performed the work, this felt extremely abrupt: “I performed the work, issued my invoice, and my client simply decides that it is worth less.”
But the case also made me reflect on differences in business culture. What we may perceive as an almost provocative challenge to an invoice may, in another environment, be seen as the opening of a price negotiation.
The difficulty is that, from that point onwards, we immediately entered a legal process.
We sought payment through legal proceedings, and the client challenged the claim. To make the discussion more objective, I submitted records relating to the time spent carrying out the work.
That evidence was useful precisely because it moved the discussion away from conflicting estimates of the hours worked towards something objectively verifiable.
But the dispute then moved to a procedural issue concerning when the evidence had been communicated, and the proceedings were delayed.
We therefore reached a rather strange situation: after a prolonged legal process, the parties themselves had hardly ever sat around the same table.
We had exchanged correspondence, communicated through lawyers and submitted evidence — but we had never really organised a direct conversation around three very basic questions:
Which hours do you dispute? Why do you dispute them? And what objective evidence do each of us have?
Meanwhile, frustration grew, both about the way the invoice had been challenged and about the time required for the judicial process.
This is exactly the kind of dispute that makes me believe that early mediation could be extremely useful.
Not as a substitute for access to justice. If no agreement is possible, the court remains essential.
But before involving lawyers, a judge and potentially lengthy proceedings over a disputed invoice, why not bring the businesspeople together with a neutral third party to examine the disagreement directly?
For me, this case illustrates a very modern problem: we exchange enormous numbers of emails, submissions and documents, but sometimes nobody actually talks to each other anymore.
3. From reducing litigation costs to preventing conflict
Early identification of potential disputes can protect a company from expensive litigation. Nevertheless, preventing a lawsuit is not always the same as addressing the underlying cause of a conflict or repairing a damaged relationship.
Question — Omid Attar
How can a company move beyond merely avoiding litigation and develop a genuine culture of conflict prevention? What signs should managers and legal professionals recognise before a disagreement becomes a serious dispute?
Answer — Raphaël Mortier
I believe a company develops a genuine culture of conflict prevention when it learns to intervene before the problem becomes a legal one.
I see this particularly clearly in employer-employee relationships.
My current company has signed the Mediation Charter, and we have introduced a mediation clause into our employment contracts.
Having attended several mediations, one thing has struck me repeatedly: when everyone finally sits around the table, the original problem is very often not really a legal one.
The employee explains that, at some point, he or she felt badly treated, unrecognised or unheard. The employee became defensive. The manager interpreted that reaction as a behavioural problem or a challenge to authority and became more rigid in return.
Then each side started accumulating arguments against the other.
Eventually, the employer considers that the relationship has become impossible, while the employee understandably does not want to resign voluntarily.
Employment law then enters the picture.
But when we reconstruct the story during mediation, we sometimes discover that the legal dispute is only the final episode of a much older deterioration in the relationship.
This is also why we have changed the way we evaluate employees.
Today, as an in-house lawyer, I am very reluctant to support a “surprise dismissal”, except of course in cases of serious misconduct or other exceptional circumstances.
If the employer is dissatisfied, the employee should normally have been told. The problem should have been clearly explained, and, where possible, the employee should have had an opportunity to respond and change the situation.
Conflict prevention often starts with something as simple as this: saying clearly what needs to be said, early enough.
4. Business strategy, leadership and governance
Business strategy is often discussed in terms of growth, competition and profitability. Yet an organisation’s long-term success also depends on trust, cooperation, psychological safety and the ability of employees and leaders to address disagreement constructively.
Question — Omid Attar
How can peace, dialogue and conflict prevention become part of a company’s strategy rather than remaining only the responsibility of its legal or human-resources department? What responsibilities do senior leaders have in creating a workplace where disagreement can be expressed safely and respectfully?
Answer — Raphaël Mortier
I can answer this directly from my current experience.
When I joined the group in 2021, one of my objectives was to review its governance, including work on a governance charter and a shareholders’ agreement.
Five years later, I am still working on it.
That may sound surprising coming from a lawyer. Technically, of course, it does not take five years to draft a shareholders’ agreement.
But drafting was never the real issue.
We had to discuss roles, decision-making, the future of the group, succession, the respective positions of shareholders and a number of issues that were, at the time, difficult to address.
Previous attempts to establish governance structures had not succeeded. One of the shareholders had died, and the succession had to be handled quite pragmatically without everything having been anticipated in advance.
Something therefore had to be rebuilt.
During the first years, some topics were almost taboo. If we had immediately tried to impose a complete governance model and asked everyone to sign it, I believe we would probably have created even greater resistance.
Today, after several years, we are able to have much more direct conversations, including about sensitive issues.
This also connects with a subject I had already worked on when advising family businesses: equality and fairness are not necessarily the same thing, particularly when organising succession, allocating responsibilities between children or thinking about the future of the family business. I had already emphasised at the time the importance of discussing these matters early rather than waiting until the family is confronted with the problem.
This experience has taught me one fairly simple rule:
A lawyer can draft a governance rule quickly; creating genuine acceptance of that rule may take years.
And sometimes, to prevent conflict, you need to slow down before you can move forward.
5. Employment relationships and dignity at work
Conflicts between employers and employees may involve more than contractual rights. They can also concern recognition, unequal power, communication, security, dignity and the feeling of being heard. If these dimensions are ignored, even a legally correct solution may leave mistrust behind.
Question — Omid Attar
In your view, how can dialogue and mediation complement employment law in protecting both the legitimate interests of an organisation and the dignity of its employees? Where should mediation stop because legal protection or formal intervention is necessary?
Answer — Raphaël Mortier
For me, employment law and mediation are not in opposition. They simply perform different functions.
Law establishes boundaries and protects people. Mediation works on the relationship where there is still room for dialogue.
In employer-employee mediations I have attended, I often find that the employee first needs an opportunity to explain what happened and at what point he or she felt hurt, misunderstood or unfairly treated.
That does not necessarily mean the employee is legally right.
But until that dimension has been heard, it can be very difficult to move on to discussing a solution.
The same is sometimes true on the employer’s side: a manager may accumulate frustration for months without expressing it clearly, and then suddenly conclude that the employee has to leave.
That is precisely what we now try to prevent through better evaluation and earlier dialogue.
For me, dignity at work also means being able to hear: “This is what is not working, this is what we expect, and this is what needs to change” before receiving a dismissal letter.
There are, of course, limits to mediation.
In situations involving violence, proven harassment, serious misconduct, coercion, or where someone requires immediate protection, mediation should never be used to avoid the application of the law.
Mediation complements the law. It must never become a way of circumventing legal protection.
6. Taxation, legal certainty and economic fairness
Contracts and taxation are technical legal subjects, but they also express how obligations, benefits, risks and public responsibilities are distributed. When economic rules are considered incomprehensible or unfair, confidence in companies and institutions may weaken.
Question — Omid Attar
Based on your experience in contracts, business law and taxation, what relationship do you see between legal certainty, economic fairness and social peace? How can companies pursue legitimate economic interests while maintaining transparency, responsibility and public trust?
Answer — Raphaël Mortier
Taxation is probably the area that taught me the most about the relationship between rules, understanding and trust.
For many years, I advised individuals, business owners and companies on sometimes highly technical tax matters.
I worked extensively, for example, on real estate taxation.
In an article on the taxation of a principal residence, I noted that the tax regime was in fact relatively poorly understood by the general public, even though misunderstanding the rules at the time of a purchase or sale could have significant financial consequences.
I was also interviewed about ownership of second homes abroad and the related reporting obligations. With automatic exchange of information, tax authorities now have access to much more information and can naturally ask taxpayers to explain particular situations.
What I learned from those years of practice is that a tax problem does not always result from an intention to evade or circumvent the rules.
Sometimes the person simply did not understand that income had to be reported in Luxembourg. Sometimes someone assumes that property located abroad is of no interest to the Luxembourg tax authorities. Sometimes the tax consequences of a seemingly simple transaction are only discovered afterwards.
The tax adviser’s role is therefore not merely to calculate tax.
It is also to make the rules understandable and predictable.
For me, this is where taxation connects with social peace: people are more likely to accept demanding rules when they understand them, when the rules are predictable and when they believe they are applied consistently.
A company is of course entitled to defend its interests and organise its affairs in a tax-efficient manner.
But with experience, I find it useful to ask two questions rather than one:
Is it legal? And is it sufficiently transparent and explainable that we are prepared to stand behind it?
7. Multicultural Luxembourg: learning to understand the other person
Luxembourg’s economy brings together people, companies and investors from many linguistic, cultural and legal backgrounds. This international character creates significant opportunities, but it may also produce different expectations concerning authority, communication, fairness and the handling of disagreement.
Question — Omid Attar
What can companies in Luxembourg do to ensure that cultural and linguistic diversity becomes a source of cooperation rather than misunderstanding or exclusion? Can responsible business practices and fair economic relationships make a practical contribution to peace in Luxembourg’s multicultural society?
Answer — Raphaël Mortier
Here, I would distinguish taxation from culture.
Luxembourg is unusual because we work every day with people who live in different countries, speak different languages and do not necessarily share the same professional references.
As early as 2011, when I was working in personal taxation, I was giving training to HR and payroll professionals on French, Belgian and German cross-border workers, particularly where part of their activity was carried out outside Luxembourg.
That is a very good illustration of Luxembourg’s reality.
A Luxembourg manager may have, in the same team, a Luxembourg resident, a French cross-border worker, a Belgian and a German. They work for the same company, sometimes doing the same job, but their tax position, some of their administrative obligations and their relationship with institutions may differ.
Then come differences in language and culture.
The invoice dispute mentioned earlier is also interesting from this perspective.
Our first reaction was: “You simply do not do that.”
But when we step back, another question appears: “Could this way of challenging a price be more normal in the other person’s business environment than it is in ours?”
That does not affect our legal rights and does not mean that we should accept the other person’s position.
But it may change the way we approach the conflict.
This, in my view, is where diversity requires a particular effort: we should not too quickly confuse behaviour we do not understand with hostile intent.
The same applies to internal communication. In some cultures, openly disagreeing with a manager is normal. In others, it may be extremely difficult. Someone may say “yes” simply to mean “I have heard you”, while the manager understands “I agree”.
A multicultural company in Luxembourg therefore cannot simply say: “Everyone is different, and diversity is a strength.”
It has to manage those differences in practical ways: clarify rules, explain decisions, check understanding and create spaces where disagreement can be expressed.
Diversity really becomes a strength when we learn to understand the other person before judging them.
8. What practical action for Luxembourg?
A possible future independent, non-profit institute in Luxembourg would seek to connect applied research, education, dialogue and mediation. One possible area of work would be “responsible business and economic dialogue in the service of peace”.
Question — Omid Attar
If such an institute were established, what need should it address first in the relationship between business, law and peace? What concrete initiative would you recommend it begin with, and what gives you hope that companies and individuals can contribute to a more peaceful society?
Answer — Raphaël Mortier
If an institute were to work on the relationship between business, law and peace, I would start with a very practical problem: we intervene far too late in conflicts.
We have highly competent lawyers, courts, procedural rules and specialists.
But by the time a business dispute reaches court, much of the damage to the relationship has often already been done.
I would therefore strongly support exploring an easily accessible business mediation mechanism, possibly inspired by the French “Médiateur des entreprises”.
The idea would be very simple: for certain business-to-business disputes, before or at the very beginning of legal proceedings, provide a genuine opportunity for discussion with a neutral third party.
The invoice dispute I mentioned earlier is a good example.
A prolonged exchange of correspondence, legal arguments, evidence and procedural discussions over the hours charged is not satisfactory for anyone.
We should be able to say much earlier:
“Before going any further, let us bring the businesspeople together with the relevant documents and identify what is really blocking an agreement.”
I would also develop very practical training for managers, lawyers and HR professionals: how do you recognise that a conflict is developing? When should you organise a direct conversation? When should you use mediation? And, conversely, when should negotiation stop and the law be applied firmly?
I believe less in large conferences about peace than in very practical tools that change the way people handle disagreement.
After twenty-five years in law, taxation and business, and now also as a mediator, what gives me hope is quite simple:
I have seen people who no longer wanted to speak to each other start speaking again.
Not everything can be solved through mediation. Not every conflict ends in compromise.
But very often, before looking for a complicated solution, we should begin with something much simpler:
Put the people back around the same table early enough.
Editorial note: the responses express Raphaël Mortier’s personal views, not the official position of any employer or institution. Details of the commercial dispute have been generalised to reduce the risk of identifying the parties.
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