EJTN proudly unveils the ‘Study on the Training Needs of Court Staff on EU Law in the EU’

The European Judicial Training Network is proud to announce the publication of the new ‘Study on the Training Needs of Court Staff on EU Law in the EU’ which was conducted in a joint project led by EJTN in collaboration with the European Institute of Public Administration (EIPA).

In June 2021, the European Commission approved and released the final versions of the ‘Study on the Training Needs of Court Staff on EU Law in the EU’ and its annexes, which was presented at the EJTN General Assembly by the project’ experts in judicial training Jeremy Cooper, Clara Cotroneo and Gerd Sinding, under the direction of the project leader, Raf Van Ransbeeck, Director of the Belgian Judicial Training Institute and the EJTN Secretary General, Judge Markus Brückner.

Three months prior, the Council of the European Union publicly pointed out that ‘increasing the knowledge and skills of justice professionals is a prerequisite for increasing the quality and efficiency of judicial systems, and the strengthening of European citizens’ trust and national justice systems and mutual trust in cross-border judicial proceedings’ (Outcome of Proceedings on the Subject of Boosting Training of Judicial Professionals, General Secretariat of the Council of the European Union, Brussels 10 March 2021, 6926/21, page 3, paragraph 6).

The European Commission laid down that the general objective of this study is to map out the detailed training needs in EU law of the different types of court staff according to their respective tasks in the EU Member States.

The specific objectives of this study are:

To identify the court staff’s tasks in the EU Member States, irrespective of the court staff status and educational background, that require the application of EU law to perform their duties.
To identify in each Member State the court staff professions who perform the abovementioned tasks. To define the training needs on EU law corresponding to the different identified tasks.
To make recommendations to the different national and EU-level stakeholders on how to answer these training needs.
To make recommendations to enable the EU-level networking of all court staff training providers.

The study’s main findings include that Court Staff should be addressed as a target group by existing training providers and networks. Namely the EJTN is mentioned with the recommendation that Court Staff should take part in the Exchange Programme managed by the EJTN.

We would like to thank the European Commission and the European Institute of Public Administration (EIPA) for the great collaboration as well as the successful achievements in the conduct of this study.

Also, we would like to thank our EJTN Members and Partners, the participants of the Court Staff study, as well as the Academy of European Law (ERA) and The European Bailiffs’ Foundation (EUBF) for their involvement.