EU Justice Programme

Overview

Priorities

Judicial cooperation in civil and criminal matters

• The objective of projects in this area is twofold: to contribute to the correct implementation of EU civil and criminal law instruments and to raise awareness of these legal instruments; they should achieve these results:

  • increased capacity of national practitioners, authorities to address issues related to judicial cooperation, and to the application of the Union instruments;
  • strengthened cooperation and exchange of information between competent national authorities in relation to judicial cooperation in civil matters, including taking into account the relevant case-law of the Court of Justice of the European Union;
  • increased awareness of legal practitioners and policy makers.

Judicial training

The objective of projects in this area is to contribute to the effective and coherent application of EU law in the areas of civil law (including consumer law), criminal law and fundamental rights, to judicial ethics and the rule of law, by covering training needs' gaps in these fields (including the specific training needs of court staff); they should achieve these results:

• Increased knowledge of EU civil, criminal and fundamental rights instruments among legal practitioners;
• Improved mutual trust between legal practitioners in cross-border judicial cooperation;
• Improved cooperation of training providers of the different legal professions.

Effective access to justice in Europe, including rights of victims of crime and procedural rights in criminal proceedings

The objective of projects in this area is to contribute to the effective and coherent application of EU criminal law in the area of the rights of victims of crime, the strengthening the procedural rights of suspects and accused persons in criminal proceedings and the maintenance and extension of the e-Justice portal.

The portal (https://e-justice.europa.eu/home.do?plang=en&action=home) includes useful documents and databases which facilitate access to justice for citizens (e.g. the information on cross-border legal proceedings, rights of victims of crime or defendants in legal proceedings, family law, the Find a Lawyer and Find a Notary interfaces) and businesses (e.g. Interconnected insolvency registers search engines, Business registers, European Payment Order forms and land registers databases, the information on monetary claims and legal professions).

Drug policy initiatives (judicial cooperation and crime prevention aspects)

The objective of the projects is to contribute to the drugs prevention policies, in particular on policy coordination, judicial cooperation and crime prevention, focusing also on the new psychoactive substances.