11.12.2014   

EN

Official Journal of the European Union

C 443/7

1.

The fact that more than 210 000 legal practitioners, whether judges, prosecutors, court staff, lawyers, notaries or bailiffs, took part in training in EU law between 2011 and 2013, as shown by the Commission yearly reports on European judicial training;

2.

The dissemination of good training practices for judges, prosecutors, lawyers and court staff and the recommendations to improve training of these professions, resulting from the Pilot Project on European judicial training proposed by the European Parliament in 2012 and implemented by the European Commission in 2013 and 2014;

3.

The adoption of the Justice Programme (1) for the period 2014-20, which shall support and promote judicial training with a view to fostering a common legal and judicial culture and that allocates 35 % of its global budget, i.e. EUR 132 million, to this objective;

4.

The increased participation of judges and prosecutors in exchanges and other cross-border training activities that were performed, facilitated and coordinated by the EJTN in the past years;

1.

While the situation is improving, more needs to be done to reach the ambitious target that half (around 700 000) of all legal practitioners should attend training in EU law between 2011 and 2020;

2.

Training needs of legal practitioners are still not fully met and the situation varies between legal professions and Member States;

3.

Good practices need to be widely disseminated, updated, reused and shared across legal professions;

4.

Legal practitioners still face obstacles to taking part in training activities, e.g. because of the lack of time or budget, the lack of training courses which include EU law, or the lack of legal language skills that are necessary to take part in cross-border training activities;

5.

At EU level, the EJTN is best placed to coordinate, through its members, national training activities and to develop a cross-border training offer for judges and prosecutors; it has received increasing co-funding support from the European Union over the past years;

1.

Integrate systematically training in EU law and in particular in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union in initial and continuous training activities at national level, where necessary for the proper discharge of judicial or professional functions;

2.

Follow-up on best practices and recommendations resulting from the Pilot Project on European judicial training, where relevant;

3.

Facilitate that cross-border training activities in EU law in another Member State or by a European training provider are recognised as fulfilling national training obligations, where these exist;

4.

Improve, where necessary, the collection of reliable data on training and share these data with the Commission, so as to allow the latter to further improve the accuracy of the yearly reporting on European judicial training;

5.

Support the coordination of training provided by national organisations of liberal legal professions through their respective EU level entities;

1.

Translate the priority of the June 2014 European Council Conclusions on legal practitioners’ training into concrete measures by:

2.

Consider increasing, but at least maintain their financial support to the EJTN, taking into account the EJTN legal framework and Member States’ direct co-financing of certain EJTN training in line with relevant training needs, in order to match the EU’s contribution and enable the network to develop further its activities such as exchanges and cross-border training;

3.

Support the collection of reliable data in this area;

1.

Draw on available expertise in the Member States and among stakeholders, and build upon the good work of the EJTN and the results of the Pilot Project on European judicial training, when it considers preparing a recommendation on standards of training covering all legal professions;

2.

Continue reporting on the participation of legal practitioners in training in EU law and in the law of other Member States;

3.

Organise regular EU-level meetings with the stakeholders involved in training of legal practitioners in order to take stock of progress and help preparing, where necessary, further improvements of European judicial training;

4.

Organise a specific EU-level meeting with the stakeholders in order to map the existing training activities, identify possible gaps and propose improvements, focusing in particular on training of legal practitioners and public officials applying the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union;

5.

Encourage training providers, whether public or, if appropriate, private, to organise more training in EU law and in foreign legal language skills for legal professions, bearing in mind the aim that such training be of high quality and cost-efficient;

6.

Address the particular issue of court staff training, including in terms of improving training in EU law of the court staff whose duties comprise elements of EU law and of facilitating the cross-border cooperation of court staff training providers where relevant;

7.

Increase progressively, respecting EU budgetary requirements and procedures, the financial support to the European Judicial Training Network, which is the essential tool to improve the training of judges and prosecutors in the EU;

8.

Increase the financial support to cross-border training projects, as foreseen in the 2014-20 Justice financial programme, while reducing the administrative burden for the beneficiaries;

9.

Continue developing the training section of the European e-Justice Portal, including e-learning, as an efficient tool to further develop European judicial training.