On 31 March and 1 April Maastricht University is organizing a Cross-border training inviting judges, magistrates and legal professionals to join the discussion and assess the strengths and weaknesses of their own system of judicial appointments, the functioning of their respective Councils of the Judiciary and the position of individual judges in the judicial process, more particularly relating to their freedom of expression.
The event is divided in two parts, starting with the discussion of the European standard on 31 March in English and moving the discussion to Dutch and Belgian context on 1 April (in Dutch).
Please find more information on the event in attachment and register at: https://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/events/triial-cross-border-training-online
As is by now well-known, respect for the rule of law is declining in several EU member states, most notably in Hungary and Poland. The European Union is increasingly taking action to safeguard the rule of law and other foundational values, and new mechanisms are regularly added to the EU’s toolbox, most recently in the form of the so-called Rule of Law Conditionality Regulation. Both the Council of Europe and its European Court of Human Rights and the EU and its Court of Justice are refining the concept of the rule of law and defining standards to assess compliance, especially in relation to judicial independence and impartiality.
These developments also impact on the work of national judges in other member states, especially in the context of the various European mechanisms of judicial cooperation which are based on mutual trust in the European area of freedom, security and justice, such as the EAW, the Dublin system and the cooperation in judicial and commercial matters. At the same time, these developments give us pause to revisit issues relating to judicial appointments, judicial independence and impartiality and judicial accountability in our own national legal systems, against the context of the emerging European standards.
In this training, we invite judges, magistrates and legal professionals from Belgium and the Netherlands as well as other Member States to join this debate and assess the strengths and weaknesses of their own system of judicial appointments, the functioning of their respective Councils of the Judiciary and the position of individual judges in the judicial process, more particularly relating to their freedom of expression.
The purpose of the training is to galvanize the dialogue on the mutable nature of the European standards of judicial independence, thereby touching upon theoretical and practical issues emerging in the European legal arena and in the interactions at national and supranational levels, such as for instance the self-administration of judiciary, as well as the separation of careers between judges and prosecutors.
This training is offered within the framework of the TRIIAL project that provides training activities and tools for judges, lawyers, prosecutors, and arbitrators on the European rule of law. The TRIIAL project is funded by the European Commission (Horizon 2020, project no. 853832, JUST-JTRA-EJTR-AG-2018).