The EJTN is facing the challenges of the current worldwide situation by continuing its seminars in a new format and making them accessible to all participants accross Europe from their confinement with the great help of its experts and support of its members. In the month of April four more seminars took place live in the virtual world.
Judicial Training Methods portfolio adapted its seminar entitled “Tutoring and mentoring” to the online seminar, which required an intense work on the part of the Activity Coordinator to adapt both the agenda and the structure of the seminar accordingly.
Despite this challenge, the outcome has been very positive: two speakers and thirty-three participants (representing thirteen EU countries and one non-EU country) attended the webinar on the 16th April 2020 and sent high appreciation comments for the work done.
To allow the audience to be as much interactive as possible, the experts organised two breakout rooms and invited the participants to work in groups detecting challenging situations and identifying the adopted solutions. These sessions contributed to raise the awareness on similar challenges existing across Europe and offered the opportunity to share best practices.
Criminal law portfolio created a webinar on procedural safeguards. Judges and prosecutors from eight member states attended the event that took place in the virtual space on the 17th April 2020.
The webinar was aimed at offering a better understanding and providing an overview of criminal defense rights under a set of directives designed to strengthen procedural safeguards of suspects and accused persons. Furthermore, a practical application of the directives through a case study aimed at ensuring that the EU directives on procedural safeguards in criminal proceedings will be effectively upheld in participants’ daily practice.
Linguistics portfolio also followed the suit and the seminar entitled Legal language training in cooperation in cybercrime was re-created with the great help of linguistics and legal experts, taking place from 20-22 April 2020 in the virtual setting.
Seventeen participants from all over Europe took part and were divided into two groups for better interaction. During the virtual classes, participants were able to enjoy interactive language classes, were presented with the legal issues in the field and could discuss practical cybercrime cases. On the last day, the participants presented the cybercrime cases they came across in their works, or countries in order to practice their speaking skills within the legal framework.
The fourth seminar was part of the Administrative law portfolio’s offer. The training course on EU Public Procurements was re-designed into three live online classroom sessions and took place on the 27th and 28th April 2020. Twenty-two professionals of the judiciary from twelve different countries met in the online environement to interactively discuss with the six experts-panellists, the key concepts, principles and themes of the EU Public Procurement law and updates on the case law of the EU courts. Special attention has been given to remedies and enforcement and on divergences between rules and procedures at national level. This seminar included a preparatory online course in which participants could access background materails and video lectures prepared by the experts so that they could be ready to actively participate to the discussion online.
