On Tuesday 13 March 2018 the closing conference of the Twinning project “Enhancing the quality of judicial training – by upgrading EU law and on-line trainings” was organized at the Judicial Academy in Zagreb. The conference was opened by Ms Andrea Posavec Franić, Beneficiary Country Project Leader and Director of the Judicial Academy of the Republic of Croatia.
During the conference, participants were addressed by Ms Mirella Rasic, Deputy Head Mission, Representation of the European Commission in Croatia. Ms Rasic emphasized that through Twinning projects efficient experience of experts and best practices of other countries can be shared. Also, Ms Rasic stressed the importance of continuous learning and on-line trainings.
Mr Kristian Turkalj, State Secretary, Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Croatia mentioned that for increasing the quality of the Croatian judiciary, EU law training and distance learning are two important topics. Concluding, Mr Turkalj stated the project helped raise the knowledge of everybody working in the judiciary.
Furthermore, objectives, purpose, project activities and achieved results of the project were highlighted by both Ms Andrea Posavec Franić and Mr Eric Vincken, MS Project Leader and Deputy Director of the Center for International Legal Cooperation of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
In total 30 training programmes including 2 online courses were developed. During the project 99 missions were implemented with 18 short term experts from The Netherlands, Lithuania and Spain as well as 32 Croatian experts not including 21 trainers. In total 425 participants have been trained, whereas the benchmark was 165.
The conference marked the end of the 18 months Dutch-Croatian project. It succeeded in upgrading and improving the current judicial training system as well as further enhancing the lifelong training system of judicial officials used by the Judicial Academy. In particular, the project focused on the upgrading of the curriculum of the Judicial Academy in the field of European Union law.
This Twinning project was implemented from 24 September 2016 until 24 March 2018. It was financed by the European Union Transition Facility IPA/2013/24986.
