Context
The European Commission’s (EC) Communication “Ensuring justice in the EU – a European judicial training strategy for 2021-2024” (“EU training strategy”) provided a framework for the proper implementation of the competences that the Lisbon Treaty granted to the EU in relation to judicial cooperation in civil and criminal matters, especially through training justice professionals so as to improve the correct and uniform application of EU law. While the EU training strategy highlighted the positive impact it has had in ensuring justice in the EU, it also made clear that action is needed on various fronts, and that justice practitioners play an essential role in upholding the rule of law, thus making the proper training of these professionals an obligation rather than an option.
TRAVAR 2 (acronym for “Training of lawyers on various areas of EU Law 2”) is the result of a reinforced tri-partite collaboration between the European Lawyers Foundation (ELF), the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE) and 10 EU Bars from 8 EU Member States, with the aim of training lawyers in various areas of EU law (but with a clear priority for training in digitalisation of justice). This project, which will continue the existing serious commitment of the lawyers’ organisations participating in the project to train lawyers in EU law, will contribute to the reinforcement of the rule of law in the EU through the implementation of a set of 15 training activities for lawyers.
Needs that the project aims to address
TRAVAR 2 is the result of the assessment undertaken by ELF, CCBE and some EU Bars as organisations which know first hand, due to their status and work, the needs of lawyers in terms of training. Lawyers’ training needs are broad and cover an extensive array of EU law. These needs range from training on the applicability of legal instruments that have been around for a while (i.e. the EU Charter) to more specific and timely needs such as training on various aspects of the digitalisation of justice in the EU. However, the training focuses not only on the content of its sessions, but also on the format in which the training is delivered, as some of the justice professionals addressed by the training (lawyers in our case) may be better suited to online training, whereas others may prefer in-person training due to their field of practice (e.g. criminal law lawyers with a cross-border practice may prefer in-person training as it favours very positively the exchange of best practices and networking between the participants). Taking into account the various lawyers’ training needs, TRAVAR 2 will combine online and in-person training activities in different fields of EU law to train lawyers to the highest possible standards.
Objectives
To train at least 1.500 lawyers from 26 EU Member States (all except Denmark) through the holding of 6 webinars on the following topics:
- Video conferencing and remote hearings in cross-border justice
- Digital tools for cross-border judicial cooperation
- Artificial intelligence in legal practice
- European Public Prosecutor’s Office
- EU sanctions
- The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.
To train, exchange best practices and facilitate networking for 270 lawyers from 9 Member States (Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, France, Romania, Spain, Poland, Ireland and Italy) on the impact of digitalisation on EU criminal law and on the daily practice of EU criminal defence lawyers through the holding of 9 in-person seminars.
To make available to EU lawyers the material resulting from the project’s training activities through free consultation and download from ELF’s website.
To undertake communication activities: (a) to reach the largest possible group of potential participants in the various project training activities, and (ii) to keep EU Bars and lawyers informed about the project’s state of play.
To continue contributing to the EU’s objective of increasing lawyers’ training on EU law.
Target group
The main target of TRAVAR 2 are lawyers, owing to the importance of their training needs in the areas to be addressed by this project. EU Bars are also themselves targeted, as it is very important for them to be regularly informed of the state of play of the project and to involve them in the promotion of the webinars, which target all EU Member States (except Denmark, which is not a part of the Justice Programme).
The fact that all the project partners are professional organisations representing Bars/lawyers is the best possible guarantee to ensure the engagement of the target groups in project activities, since lawyers are members of EU Bars which, at the same time, are members of the CCBE/ELF.
Co-funded by the European Union