Council of Europe

The Lisbon Network was set up in 1995 as part of the legal co-operation programmes in order to enable the different judicial training bodies in Europe to become better acquainted with each other, exchange information on matters of common interest and to support, by means of this dialogue, the setting up or further development of judicial training facilities in the new democracies of central and eastern Europe.

Since January 2011, a new impulse has been given to the Lisbon Network and its activities have been integrated to those of the CEPEJ.

Mission

The mission of the Lisbon Network lies within the fulfilment of the goals of the Council of Europe, i.e. in particular the independence and efficiency of justice, which are a key factor in a State that guarantees Human Rights and founds its institutions on the Rule of Law.

The judicial training schools are key tools to promote and safeguard independency, efficiency and quality of judicial systems. As a CEPEJ consultative body, the Network's missions are in particular:

- to complement the work of the CEPEJ by advising the members on questions related to the efficiency and quality of justice through judicial training;
- to advise the CEPEJ on the issues regarding judicial training within the framework of its process for evaluating European judicial systems and carry out in-depth analysis of the relevant information resulting from this process;
- to support and disseminate the work of the CEPEJ (in particular on judicial time management, quality of justice, mediation, execution of court decisions) among new (initial training) and experienced (in-service training) judges and prosecutors;
- to trial within judicial training institutions the relevant CEPEJ's tools and guidance;
- to encourage dialogue between national and European judicial bodies, amongst institutions responsible for judicial training and amongst judges and prosecutors;
- to help training institutions in drafting entry-level tests (in particular when it comes to court management issues);
- to help in drafting specific curricula and training methodologies on the efficiency and quality of justice, management skills, etc;
- to elaborate a system for the evaluation of the training on international legal instruments;
- to provide guidelines to legal research;
- to help training institutions to implement the “Minimum Corpus of Council of Europe standards” and the “Concept paper on the training of judges and prosecutors on cybercrime”.