The Closing conference of the project “Promotion of the rule of law and fundamental rights through high-quality online trainings in the Croatian Judiciary” was held on 5 September 2023 in Zagreb.

The Council of Europe (CoE), in cooperation with the EU Commission DG REFORM, has implemented a 2-year project, providing support to the Judicial Academy of Croatia and the Office of the Representative of the Republic of Croatia before the European Court of Human Rights. The project was designed to improve the effectiveness of justice, to shorten the length of court proceedings, to reduce the backlog of cases and to accompany the digitalization of the judicial procedures. Regarding the technical support provided, numerous ambitious goals have been covered in the field of human rights and the rule of law, tailored to the need of the Croatian judiciary. The project team has implemented all the planned activities, provided expertise based on the best EU and CoE practices and methodologies of judicial training (HELP and EJTN) and successfully contributed to strengthen the Judicial Academy in designing and delivery of high-quality legal training with a focus on e-learning and use of digital tools by the Academy.

Legal professionals can avail from free and accessible HELP courses in Croatian in different Rule of Law and fundamental rights issues such as judicial ethics or privacy rights here. Most of the topical HELP courses cover both Council of Europe and European Union standards as well as case-law of the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union. The development of these courses (in English) is supported and largely financed by the European Commission separately via DG Justice.

The event was attended by representatives of the project beneficiaries: Judicial Academy of Croatia and the Office of the Croatian Government Representative before the ECHR, representatives of other stakeholders: the Ministry of Justice and Administration, state Attorney General  and deputy chair of the Steering Council of the Judicial Academy, a judge of the Supreme court of the Republic of Croatia, court presidents, judges, representatives of the Law Faculties, DG REFORM Deputy Director and Senior Expert, DG JUST, CoE and EU representatives, project experts and a large audience of participants.

The project partners and stakeholders were proud to celebrate the outstanding results of this project, which transmitted a renewed determination of the Croatian institutions for reforms and provided grounds to pursue follow-up interventions or projects to further strengthening the effectiveness of Croatian judiciary.

The project is funded by the EU via the Technical Project Instrument of the European Union and implemented by the Council of Europe, in cooperation with the European Commission.