European judicial training

European judicial training is a crucial tool to build the European area of justice. European citizens, residents and businesses must live and work in a secure and beneficial legal environment, which requires that European law must be implemented and applied in a uniform manner all over the European Union. Cross-border proceedings must take place smoothly and swiftly. Legal practitioners must have a good knowledge of the EU acquis and its cooperation instruments as well as a good understanding of and trust in the different national legal systems.

 On 13 September 2011, the European Commission adopted a Communication on European judicial training: "Building trust in EU-wide justice, a new dimension to European judicial training", to support these aims. More information can be found on DG Justice Website and on the European e-Justice Portal.

A pilot project on European judicial training

The European Parliament has always been a strong political supporter of judicial training. As a step further, the European Parliament proposed in 2012 a pilot project on European judicial training to "help fulfil the goal of building a European judicial culture" by identifying best practices in training of professionals of justice in Union law as well as in national legal systems and traditions, promoting the exchange of best practices and disseminating them.

In order to implement the pilot project, the European Commission published a call for tender divided into different lots in order to get targeted, specific and relevant results adapted to the different professions in the European Union, in respect of the independence of the judiciary and of the self-organisation of legal professions.

Training lawyers on EU law

Lawyers in private practice need to be up-to-date with European Union law to be able to give the best possible advice to their clients and to raise points of EU law in court when relevant.

In order to support the development and promotion of European judicial training for lawyers in private practice, this project is implementing "lot 2" of the pilot project. It will first set out to map the state of play in the EU Member States of training of lawyers in European Union law and judicial cooperation procedures as well as on national legal systems and traditions, then to identify best practices and how to best disseminate them and possibly to elaborate recommendations to improve the situation.

Directorate General Justice
European Commission