The first paper presents an overview of the activities of the Council of Europe (COE) in the area of mediation between juvenile offenders and their victims. The Committee of Ministers of the COE has established a committee of experts on mediation in penal matters, which began its work at the end of 1996. The outcome of this work will be a recommendation and a report that should provide guidance to the governments of member states in this area. The second paper reviews the origins of restorative justice, with attention to mediation as a means of bringing the offender and victim together to agree upon a plan of action for repairing the harm the offense has caused. Manifestations of restorative justice in various European countries are briefly described. The fourth paper explains the basic idea underlying restorative justice, with a concluding section on the situation of restorative justice in Germany. Three papers provide an overview of victim-offender mediation in Austria, Belgium, and the United Kingdom. These papers are followed by three papers that deal with planning for and the development of victim-offender mediation in Poland. The focus of these papers is the history, development, and evaluation of an experimental program of mediation between juvenile offenders and their victims. The final two papers consider key questions on victim-offender mediation and key subject areas of discussion.