ACTIONES (Active Charter Training through Interaction Of National ExperienceS)

The project is implemented with the financial support of the European Union's Fundamental Rights and Citizenship Program.

ACTIONES

Active Charter Training through Interaction of National Experiences / Active training on the European Union Charter of Fundamental Rights through the exchange of national experiences

I. Project description

ACTIONES is a project coordinated by the European University Institute's Centre for Judicial Cooperation in Florence (EUI Centre for Judicial Cooperation). It involves 17 partners: seven academic institutions, a European association of judges, and nine national institutions responsible for training judges and lawyers. The European Union funds the project.

The ACTIONES project is based on the premise that a high and consistent standard of protection of fundamental rights in the European Union requires more than mere knowledge of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. This must be complemented by keen social and political sensitivity, awareness, and flexibility in adopting procedural solutions across different legal systems, openness to their results, and a willingness to exchange views. These qualities must be cultivated while accounting for the time and resource constraints faced by judges and other legal professionals in their daily work. The project aims to respond to these needs through a series of transnational and local training sessions. The training sessions will use simple tools to familiarise judges and lawyers with the techniques for mutual vertical and horizontal influence between European and national courts in practice. This would ensure the effective implementation of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and the availability of appropriate legal remedies against its violations.

If you would like to participate in transnational training, please refer to the call for judges (in English).

The ACTIONES project will run from November 1, 2015, to October 31, 2017.

National training for judges will also take place in Slovenia on May 8 and 9, 2017, at the Faculty of Law of the University of Ljubljana.

II. Activities

The ACTIONES project will have four phases. At the beginning, the partners will conduct a detailed study of European and national case law on the difficulties in applying this instrument, namely, its use. They will compile it into a modular Handbook and Database (WS1). These tools will form the basis for 12 training workshops (five cross-border in WS2 and seven national in WS3) and an information dissemination phase (with another cross-border training session and a Final Conference in WS4). Although the information will be disseminated to the broader public mainly in relation to the final products, the preliminary phases of the project already include aspects of information dissemination. The expansion of the database and the target group for the workshops are two elements of the information dissemination strategy, which will be implemented at the start of the project and will continue after its completion, when we will support the inclusion of the ACTIONES platform on the specialised website of the European Commission and other interested cross-border and national institutions (EJTN, etc.).

Type and number of persons benefiting from the project

The ACTIONES project has two main target groups: judges and lawyers from Member States. The involvement of these two groups in the project expands in concentric circles, with each phase involving a wider circle of target beneficiaries. Accordingly, the cross-border workshops in WS2 will include judges from all Member States in the consortium; the national workshops in WS3 will be aimed at judges and lawyers working in the Member States in the consortium; and the activities in WS4 will be aimed at judges and lawyers from across the European Union.

At least 370 judicial practitioners will be trained as part of the project. Some participants will also serve as trainers to support the independent replication of the project methodology. It is important that the tools remain available online after the end of the project to increase the number of potential beneficiaries.

The ACTIONES project will contribute to the development of a new generation of judges and lawyers who are aware of the potential of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights in the current areas of European Union activity.

Type and number of results

The final result of the project will be the ACTIONES Training Platform, which will consist of the following four components:

– a modular handbook on the application of the Charter in selected areas in English, containing hypothetical cases, guidelines, and tips for training providers, – a database containing case law, – eight different training curricula adapted to specific national characteristics and translated into the official languages of the partners who will be planning them, and – a report on the training methodology used in the ACTIONES project, which will enable it to be replicated.

III. Project Partners

Project applicant

EUI Centre for Judicial Cooperation

Fabrizo Cafaggi (project leader), Deirdre Curtin, Anna Triandafyllidou, Philippe de Bruicker, Federica Casarosa (project manager), Madalina Moraru

Slovenian partners

University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Law

Prof. Dr. Saša Zagorc (steering committee member), Doc. Dr. Maruša Tekavčič Veber

Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Slovenia, Centre for Judicial Education

Tadeja Jelovšek (steering committee member)

Partners

Association of European Administrative Judges, College of Europe, Croatian Judicial Academy, Estonian Supreme Court, European Inter-University Centre, National Association of the Romanian Bars, Polish National School of Judiciary and Public Prosecution, Romanian National Institute of Magistracy, Slovenian Judicial Training Centre, Spanish General Council for the Judiciary, University of Amsterdam, University of Ljubljana, University of Parma, University of Pompeu Fabra, University of Uppsala, Italian School for the Magistracy.

Key results

As part of the project, we conducted training for judges and lawyers and prepared the ACTIONES Handbook on Judicial Interaction Techniques in the Application of the EU Charter in Slovenian.