On 13 September 2011, the European Commission adopted the Communication "Building trust in EU-wide justice: a new dimension to European judicial training" which sets up European judicial training as a priority.
On 13 September 2011, the European Commission has adopted the Communication "Building trust in EU-wide justice: a new dimension to European judicial training" (COM(2011) 551 final). This Communication sets up European judicial training as a priority in line with the Action Plan implementing the Stockholm Programme.
There are around 1.4 million legal practitioners in the EU, including judges, prosecutors, lawyers, notaries, bailiffs and court staff. The objective of the European Commission is to enable half of these legal practitioners to participate in European judicial training activities by 2020 through the use of all available resources at local, national and European level. The aim is to equip legal practitioners to apply European law – which is part of their role at national level. It will also help to build mutual trust between Europe's different legal systems and improve the implementation of European legislation.
To achieve this, it calls on national governments, councils for the judiciary, professional bodies and judicial training institutions both at EU and national level to commit to integrating EU law into their training programmes and to increasing the volume of courses and participants. The Commission itself intends to facilitate access to EU funding to support high-quality training projects, including e-learning. The Commission will also launch a two-week exchange programme for new judges and prosecutors from 2014 onwards. The Commission will support training by sharing practical guidelines on training methodologies and evaluation. The Commission will also encourage public-private partnerships to develop innovative training solutions. The Commission will build on the strengths of all existing training providers, including the European Judicial Training Network (EJTN), the Academy of European Law (ERA) and the European-level legal professional organisations.
Read the Communication