Parliament’s committees having responsibilities in the area of judicial training welcome the Commission’s response to the suggestions set out in Parliament’s resolutions on an EU criminal justice area, the Stockholm programme, and judicial training, and its proposal for a pilot project. However, bearing in mind that Articles 81 and 82 TFEU provide for the adoption under the ordinary legislative procedure of measures aimed at ensuring ‘support for the training of the judiciary and judicial staff’, and hence for the full involvement of Parliament:

1. How does the Commission envisage achieving its objectives of ensuring that half of EU legal professionals are offered training activities by 2020 and that they effectively participate in the training offered?

2. What steps does it intend to take to strengthen the network of legal training bodies across the Union and to make optimum use of national and European training institutions so as to provide familiarisation courses in national, comparative and EU law for judges, prosecutors and other legal professionals on a stable and ongoing basis, while overcoming the inherent difficulties (demands on judges’ time, need for the targeted use of scarce funds, need to develop language skills and/or multilingual training tools)?

3. How does the Commission intend to strengthen the role of existing training providers and networks in the context of its proposal for a new Justice Programme in order to enable them to contribute fully to achieving the objectives of the Stockholm Programme?

4. How does the Commission intend to take advantage of Parliament’s wish to play a proactive part, not only in determining judicial training policy, but also in shaping the organisation of the proposed pilot project?