On Tuesday, 16thof April, the Latvian Court Administration successfully concluded the project “Training of judges under Twinning”in Georgia that was launched in September 2017.
The project was implemented by the Court Administration as a managing partner in cooperation with the Latvian Judicial Training Centre, the French National Judicial School, and the Croatian Academy of Judges. The aim of the project was to approximate the judicial training practice of the Georgia Judicial Training School to European standards by strengthening and developing the institution's capacity and efficiency, as well as future curriculum development and quality.
Jānis Bordāns, the Minister of Justice, Juris Jurašs, the Parliamentary Secretary, Irēna Kucina, the Deputy State Secretary on Court of the Ministry of Justice, and Edvīns Balševics, the Director of the Court Administration come to the closing ceremony in Georgia.
In his speech the Minister of Justice Jānis Bordāns stressed: “I believe that the cooperation of the institutions involved in implementation of the project has great potential, which both contributed to the implementation of judicial system reform in Georgia and gave the opportunity to gain valuable insights from other national experiences of reforms. I am pleased that we have had the opportunity to join the Georgian, French and Croatian legal experts, which were inspired and led by the idea of motivated and reliable judiciary; in addition, the Twinning project has contributed significantly to the strengthening of the current cooperation of Ministries of Justice of Latvia and Georgia and the subordinate institutions, and created a strong basis for the further exchange of experience and knowledge.”
Within the project, training programmes for the candidates to the position of judge were modernized, modules (training programmes) of continuing education were developed, structural units of the Georgia Judicial Training School were strengthened, and also e-training programmes for judges and judicial stuff were implemented.
Experts involved in the project (29 from Latvia, 14 from Croatia, and 7 from France) worked 259 business days, 32 representatives of the Georgian Judicial Training School and judges participated in training trips to Latvia, Croatia, France, and Belgium, and 21 persons participated in various training seminars of the European Judicial Training Network (EJTN) (in Romania, Estonia, United Kingdom, Bulgaria, Portugal, Hungary, Italy, France, Cyprus). The project also hosted an international conference “Modern challenges in training judges”, which was attended by around 80 Georgian representatives (judicial reform specialists) and 8 international experts.
The total budget of the project composed EUR 800,000 and it was fully financed by the European Commission.