Newsletter N .9 | February 2022

Dear Project Partners, dear Fellows,

This issue of the FRICoRe Newsletter offers a presentation of the first workshop held as part of the “Training the Trainers” programme of the project.

The workshop “Fundamental Rights and Effective Remedies: A Cross-Sectoral Training for European Judges and Trainers” took place on 10-11 February 2022. Due to the restrictions still underway in Italy and across Europe related to the COVID-19 pandemic, the workshop, originally supposed to be held in Naples at one of the seats of the Italian School of Magistracy, took place entirely remotely on the Zoom platform. The workshop was co-organized by the Italian School of Magistracy and the University of Trento.
The event was intended for judges, lawyers and trainers to be trained.

The workshop’s purpose was to help trainers to focus on the impact of article 47 CFR and of the principle of effective judicial protection upon the role of national judges in identifying, adapting and, whenever possible, "creating" remedies for the breach of EU law in different areas, including consumer protection, data protection, asylum and migration, non-discrimination, health.

On the first day, FRICoRe had the honour of hosting the Keynote Speech of judge Octavia Spineanu-Matei, CJEU, who presented on the art. 47 CFR providing concrete examples taken from the recent case law of the CJEU.

After this, the first roundtable explored "Art. 47 CFR, Art. 19 TUE and the principle of effectiveness: the impact on remedies and sanctions in EU law" thanks to the presentations from judges D. Ungureanu (Romania), E. Zeller (Austria), A. Witters (Belgium) and L. Le Haude (Lithuania) and the subsequent lively discussion with the audience.

On the occasion of the first group session on how to design Hypothetical case-based Q&A sessions the trainees were divided into two working groups (group A and group B) hosted in two different Zoom breakout rooms. Each group was led by members of the partner teams, in charge of fostering the discussion based on the training materials circulated before the workshop. After discussing separately, a spokesperson from each group presented the results of their group’s discussions in the plenary session, and a discussion followed.

The first day was closed by the roundtable focused on "Art. 47 CFR and the definition of effective, proportionate and dissuasive remedies". The panel consisted of G. Fiengo (judge, Italy), S. Saraiva (judge, Portugal), T. Gazi (lawyer, Greece), C. Carroll (judge, Ireland). The presentations by the speakers stimulated a lively discussion with all the participants.

On the first day, FRICoRe had the honour of hosting the Keynote Speech of Prof. Eleanor Sharpston, former Advocate General, CJEU, titled “Article 47 of the Charter and the principles that sanctions and remedies for breaches of EU law should be effective, proportionate and dissuasive: something old? Or something new?”. The speech aroused great interest and stimulated a number of questions from the audience.

The day continued with the third and last roundtable. This roundtable was characterized by a specific focus on judicial training, with particular reference to training in the field of fundamental rights. In fact, the panel was made up of expert trainers from Judicial Schools and chaired by the representative of the Italian School of Magistracy that co-organized the training event.

The second interactive group session followed the same organization as the first. Following the discussion from the two separate groups, one spokesperson per group reported in the plenary session the conclusions drawn from their group and a short final discussion followed.

The afternoon session hosted a concluding panel discussion focused on how to deliver judicial training in the online mode, thanks to practical examples offered by Dijana Mandić (Head of Sector for Development of Higher Education. Directorate for Higher Education, Croatia) and Federica Casarosa, in charge of presenting the e-learning module of the FRICoRe project.

Thanks to the active participation of the speakers and discussants involved in both days, the online format did not prevent the expected exchange of knowledge and practices.