Judicial training guarantees a high level of skills and is essential to ensure independent justice. As such, judicial training and education represent one of the key elements of the judicial reforms across Council of Europe Members States, including in Montenegro. Work has been done in recent years to improve the quality of judicial training programmes in the country, however, according to the European Commission’s reports, further improvements of training methodology needs assessment are needed, specifically in terms of identification, analysis and evaluation of training needs of judges and prosecutors.
Based on these reports and also on key findings of the Functional analysis of Judicial Training Centre conducted in 2020 under the framework of the joint European Union/Council of Europe programme “Horizontal Facility for the Western Balkans and Turkey 2019-2022”, a revised training needs assessment (TNA) methodology have been developed by the Council of Europe consultants, in co-operation with the Programme Council and Secretariat of the Judicial Training Centre. Stakeholders’ contributions were gathered through workshops and meetings organised in previous months by the Council of Europe, in co-operation with the Judicial Training Centre.
Such interactive process has resulted in a practically-oriented TNA document which encompasses various available tools and sources of information, including surveys; focus group sessions; review of legislation, reports and strategic documents and analysis of available statistical data. In order to mainstream gender professionally, a gender component has been integrated into this process and proposals for engendering training needs assessment were formulated. The document has been presented to and discussed with members of JTC bodies at the online meeting held on 30 September.
The revised TNA methodology will serve as a guiding document for the planning and design of envisaged training activities, including in developing 2022 Annual Training Programme, and is expected to facilitate further changes in the design and delivery of judicial training programmes in Montenegro.
The methodology has been developed under the action "Accountability and professionalism of the judicial system in Montenegro" which is part of the joint European Union/Council of Europe joint programme "Horizontal Facility for the Western Balkans and Turkey 2019 - 2022".
