Consensual solutions were defended in a panel at the Lisbon Forum as a way to reduce legal disputes
The vice-president of the STJ, Luis Felipe Salomão, and the TCU minister Benjamin Zymler defended this Wednesday (June 3, 2026) the advancement of consensual solutions to reduce litigation and provide legal certainty to public and private contracts. Both participated in the panel “Consensualism: legal security and social and economic benefits”on the 3rd and last day of .
Salomão said that Brazil still has a legal culture focused on litigation. According to him, universities have taught future legal professionals to “file an initial petition, contest” and act in hearings, but not compose conflicts. “We start late and wake up late to the problem”he declared.
The vice-president of the STJ stated that the country began to address the issue more forcefully from 2015 onwards, with the CPC (Civil Procedure Code), the legal framework for mediation and the reform of the Arbitration Law. For him, the set of standards created a “conflict composition microsystem”but cultural change will still take time.
“The debates that we will have to have will continue. There are public policy proposals from the CNJ, the courts, the private sector, the effective implementation of this mediation clause, the proper functioning of the arbitration chambers. All of this will arrive in the future”these.
Salomão cited cases in which agreements helped reduce legal disputes.
He mentioned ADPF 165, on inflationary purges, and said that the agreement approved by the STF led to the payment of more than R$5 billion and the dismissal of more than 370 thousand cases. He also cited initiatives by the STJ and the CJF (Federal Justice Council) to deal with mass disputes, such as consumer actions and compensation for people with leprosy.
Zymler focused his speech on TCU’s experience with consensual solutions in infrastructure concession contracts. According to him, traditional mechanisms such as expiry and re-bidding were “absolutely ineffective” in cases of frozen contracts, because they tended to lead to long legal disputes.
The minister said that the TCU started to act as “technical mediator” in negotiations between the public and private sectors. The idea, according to him, was to create a structure in which specialized auditors participate at the negotiation tables, while ministers remain distant from the process and only analyze any terms of commitment at the end.
According to Zymler, the experience showed “a greed” of companies and public agents for consensual solutions. He stated that the agreements allow measuring concrete advantages for the State and users of public services, including economic projections, comparison of scenarios and the use of artificial intelligence.
“The final result of the Court of Auditors is that we have already reached something like R$300 billion in the world of consensus. We already have 15 terms of commitment signed”he said. For the minister, the TCU helped to overcome bottlenecks in sectors such as highways, railways and airports.
Zymler also stated that he hopes that the STF recognizes the legal validity and practical effects of the TCU’s normative instruction that regulates consensus. According to him, the model brought benefits to the Brazilian infrastructure sector by allowing the resumption of previously frozen contracts.
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