What future for the training of magistrates and judicial personnel in the European Union?

The discussions will focus on issues concerning common knowledge and values and also on the specific needs of judicial personnel.

The French Presidency hopes that this conference will be an opportunity to further the discussions begun during the Informal Justice and Home Affairs Council on 7th and 8th of July on the training of magistrates and judicial staff within the EU with the aim of getting the Council of Ministers to adopt a resolution on training before the end of the Presidency.

Since the Summit of Heads of State and Government in Tampere, Finland, in 1999, judgements on civil and criminal matters handed down by the magistrates of the European Union must be implemented in other Member States; this is known as the application of the mutual recognition principle. According to this principle, judges in one Member State of the Union must recognise legal decisions handed down in other Member States as though they were decisions handed down in their own country and must give them the same legal effect.

For example, a European arrest warrant issued by a Romanian judicial authority must, if necessary, be enforced in France. In these circumstances, the French judge must apply the ruling of the Romanian judge.

The implementation of this principle presupposes great mutual trust between the magistrates and judicial personnel within the EU. However, this type of mutual trust cannot be imposed from above but must be based on a sense of belonging to the same judicial culture; one of its foundations is the conviction that the magistrates and judicial personnel of other countries receive sufficient training.

To improve the application of mutual recognition, it is therefore important to develop a common judicial culture and bring the Member States' knowledge closer together in this area.

Although considerable efforts have been made to achieve this target, deficiencies still remain in the area of training, particularly with regard to:

• knowledge of European Union law;
• the use of different networks and bodies created to facilitate European judicial cooperation;
• command of languages;
• knowledge of the legal and judicial systems of other Member States or exchanges between legal professionals on their working practices and the difficulties they encounter.

Press release: What future for the training of the judiciary and judicial staff in the European Union ? 

Report from the conference “Training of the judiciary and judicial staff in the European Union” 

• Updated: 12.11.2008

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