Slovenia - Judicial Training Centre - EJTN

About

As part of the Ministry of Justice, the Judicial Training Centre (JTC) is the central institution for providing initial and continuous training. The JTC is managed by a judge in accordance with the law for a term of three years.

All the JTC’s activities are specified in its Annual Work Programme, which takes into account the proposals of judicial authorities and the participants of training courses, and the initiatives of the interested public. The draft programme is discussed by the Expert Council and adopted by the Minister of Justice.

The Expert Council is an advisory body and consists of the representatives of the Ministry of Justice, the Supreme Court of the Republic of Slovenia, the Supreme State Prosecutor’s Office of the Republic of Slovenia, the State Attorneys’ Office of the Republic of Slovenia, the Judicial Council of the Republic of Slovenia, the Slovenian Association of Judges, the Association of State Prosecutors of Slovenia and law faculties in the Republic of Slovenia.

Training

The JTC provides training for judges, state prosecutors and state attorneys as well as staff employed with courts, state prosecutors’ offices and state attorneys’ offices. It also organises preparatory training courses for judicial trainees and conducts the national bar exam, as well as provides training and exams for enforcement agents, official receivers, court experts, court appraisers and court interpreters, mediators and refugee counsellors.

The training is provided in the form of seminars, lectures, workshops, schools for judges and schools for state prosecutors and state attorneys, conferences, roundtables and panels.

Besides the judiciary, the JTC collaborates with external experts who are specialised in various legal fields. As part of interdisciplinary training, the collaboration extends to experts from numerous other fields, such as psychology, medicine, economy, ethics, integrity, etc.

International cooperation

As a judicial training institution, the JTC cooperates with various international judicial training institutions and is a member of the European Judicial Training Network (EJTN), the Academy of European Law (ERA) and the International Organization for Judicial Training (IOJT).

Within the scope of international cooperation, the JTC is responsible for the following:

• participating in international training projects and seminars as a partner;
• hosting foreign participants within the EJTN exchange programme for judges, state prosecutors and court and prosecutorial staff;
• coordinating the participation of Slovenian judicial judges, state prosecutors and court and prosecutorial staff within the EJTN exchange programme;
• coordinating the participation of foreign judicial authorises in national training courses on European law.

In addition, the JTC cooperates with the European Institute of Public Administration (EIPA) and the European Patent Office (EPO). It is also a partner of the Council of Europe within the scope of the HELP programme (Human Rights Education for Legal Professionals), which is intended for the Council of Europe Member States to provide support in the implementation of the European Convention on the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms at the national level.