The Interactive Judicial Training Report

Introduction

This interactive European Judicial Training Report summarises the achievements of the objectives set by the European Judicial Training Strategy for 2021-2024.

The findings presented in this report form a basis for the new Judicial Training Strategy (JTS) 2025-2030, which places a strong focus on digitalisation and aims to create a supportive environment for the DigitalJustice@2030 Strategy.

This report explores the findings both through a European lens and from the perspectives of individual Member States and judicial professions. By examining the data from these complementary viewpoints, we gain a deeper understanding of progress achieved, identify remaining challenges, and foster a more coherent and effective approach to judicial training across the European Union.

Highlights

Since 2021, the total number of instances of justice professionals participating in training activities on EU law has grown from 1.8 million to 2.4 million.
However, the percentage of justice professionals annually taking part in continuing training on EU law declined from 22.1% in 2021 to 14.3% in 2024, after peaking at 28.6% in 2022.
The objectives of the 2021–2024 strategy were only fully achieved by notaries at EU level, yet in certain Member States the objectives were achieved for several professions. Please find more information in the detailed report.
On average (2021-2024), 215 thousand justice professionals, around 14 % of all EU justice professionals, received continuing training on EU law or the law of another Member State per year.
On average (2021-2024), training for more than 52 thousand participants per year was (co)funded by the EU. This represents roughly a quarter of all the justice professionals who received training on EU law.
From 2021 to 2024, training related to digitalisation and AI increased from 2.6% to 4.7% of all training activities, while IT skills training rose from 17.4% to 18.8%. Although these figures remain modest, the upward trend demonstrates a growing recognition of the need for more digitalisation-focused training.
Considerable differences in the level of participation in training remain across Member States and the various justice professions.
Better and more targeted training activities must ultimately remain the goal to answer the needs of justice professionals. This should also include training on digitalisation, which increasingly gains in importance.

Justice Professionals Trained

Between 2011 and 2024, there have been almost 2.4 million instances of justice professionals taking part in training in EU law or in the law of another Member State.

Compared to 2023, justice professionals’ cumulative participation in training activities on EU law has increased by 6.8% in 2024. However, the number of justice professionals participating in continuing training activities has decreased from 20.6% in 2023 to 14.3% in 2024. This explains the lower contribution to the cumulative participation.

Nevertheless, it is worth noticing that the percentage of justice professionals taking part in training on EU law varies considerably among Member States. While judges are represented across nearly all Member States with consistently high participation rates, prosecutors and lawyers are not equally present in the data.

Such variations may occur because of training gaps and data collection process. The data has not been provided by all professions in all Member States, which leaves room for improvement.

Percentages are calculated as a proportion based on survey data, from the total number of professionals registered in the country (based on the latest CEPEJ report).

Over the time span of 2021-2024, for professions such as judges and notaries, we can observe a steady upward trend with few variations, especially before 2023 and in 2024 again. Prosecutors, court and prosecutors’ office staff seem to show a return to pre-pandemic levels of professionals trained and in the case of prosecutors, we can observe slight increases overall. Whereas bailiffs and lawyers seem to have stayed at stable levels with a minor decrease, we can observe 2022 as a record year for bailiffs since the beginning of the strategy in 2021.

EU Funding

On average (2021-2024), training for more than 52 thousand participants annually has been (co-)funded by the EU. This represents roughly a quarter of all the justice professionals who received training on EU law. In 2022 and 2023, the European Social Fund has had the largest share of participants within EU funded training.

The European Judicial Training Network (EJTN) received the highest financial support from the European Commission in form of operating grants. Operating grants to support training were also awarded to the Academy of European Law (ERA), the European Lawyers Foundation (ELF) and the European Institute of Public Administration (EIPA).

In addition, the Commission awarded action grants under several of its financial programmes – the Justice Programme in the areas of civil and criminal justice, fundamental rights, and competition law and the Citizenship, equality, rights, and values programme (CERV). 

European Commission Agencies: European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), the European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA), European Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) and the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Training (CEPOL) also trained justice professionals. 

Next Steps

The demand for digitalisation-related training has grown substantially to address emerging challenges and turn them into opportunities. The focus in the coming years will be on enhancing digital competences of justice professionals. The European Commission has organised conferences to address these challenges, fostering collaboration among stakeholders to upskill justice professionals, and to identify evolving training needs and priorities, and has published a new strategy.

The European Judicial Training Strategy 2025-2030 as part of the Digital Justice Package, has a strong focus on digitalisation and supports building

skills to efficiently use digital tools, including AI, and infrastructure in justice systems,
knowledge of EU law, related to the digital economy and society, as well as
awareness of benefits, limitations and inherent risks of digitalisation and AI in justice.

Fundamental rights, rule of law and recurrent EU law training areas remain important topics of judicial training.

The Commission will hold the European Judicial Training Conference in February 2026 under the auspices of the Cypriot Presidency of the Council of the EU to facilitate the implementation of the objectives of the new strategy.

Since 2011, the European Commission has monitored judicial training across Europe and evaluated the progress made under the previous European judicial training strategies. This interactive report summarises milestones and results of judicial training.

Judicial training remains a responsibility of the Member States, justice professionals and their training providers, as well as the EU. To achieve meaningful progress, equipping justice professionals with the competences, necessary to adapt to rapidly changing societies and economies, will require ambitious actions and close cooperation and coordination among all stakeholders.

One thing is clear: judicial training, creating a supportive environment for the digitalisation of justice systems, is a top priority on our agenda.