Action Grants to Promote Judicial Cooperation in Civil and Criminal Matters 2025

Objective

• Facilitate and support judicial cooperation in civil and criminal matters, and promote the rule of law, independence and impartiality of the judiciary, including by supporting the efforts to improve the effectiveness of national justice systems, and the effective enforcement of decisions.

Priority Areas

• Priority 1-Judicial cooperation in civil matters:
  • Priority shall be given to projects aiming in particular at:
    • better enforcement of judicial decisions through better procedures, casehandling and cooperation in cross-border disputes;
    • improving in a child-sensitive way the situation of children involved in civil cases, e.g. through better procedures, case-handling and cooperation in the family law area such as parental responsibility, international child abduction and maintenance or issues relating to civil status of children;
    • facilitating cross-border procedures, e.g. on service of documents and taking of evidence, on successions or cross-border circulation of public documents, through better information and awareness-raising.
• Priority 2-Judicial cooperation in criminal matters:
  • Priority shall be given to the implementation and practical application of the following mutual recognition instruments
  • Priority shall also be given to:
    • an efficient contribution to the European Security Union Strategy as regards the judicial responses to terrorism, notably on reinforcing the prevention of radicalisation, especially in prisons and after release from prison, and taking into account the gender of (ex) detainees.
    • implementation of the Commission Recommendation on detention4 and linked issues related to detention conditions, including protection of vulnerable detainees and prevention gender-based violence, pre-trial detention and alternatives to detention, as well as raising awareness of case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and recommendations of the Council of Europe in this field;
    • the functioning of Mutual Legal Assistance (MLA) Treaties or other Treaties containing provisions on MLA with third States (e.g. EU-US MLA Agreement, Budapest Cybercrime Convention and its Second Additional Protocol), including with respect to the exchange of electronic data.
• Priority 3- Support to the Member States for the setting up and strengthening of national networks active in the area of judicial cooperation in civil and criminal matters:
  • The main objective is to contribute to the effective and coherent application of the EU acquis relating to judicial cooperation in civil, commercial and criminal matters.
  • In the area of civil and commercial matters, support will be provided to the members of the European Judicial Network in civil and commercial matters (EJN-civil) and to the national authorities, courts and professional associations they represent. Projects will focus on setting up and strengthening national EJN-civil networks to ensure better handling of cross-border civil cases and more generally a better implementation of EU legislation. The national networks will encourage the full participation of all national Network members5 (e.g. central authorities, bailiffs, notaries, lawyers). This will help to increase the contribution of EU countries to the Network’s activities (in particular the Network meetings) and enhance the work and visibility of the Network as a whole.

Funding Information

• The available call budget is EUR 5 900 000.
• Projects should normally range between 12 and 24 months.

Eligible Activities

• This topic will cover the following activities:
  • facilitating cooperation between competent authorities and agencies, legal practitioners and/or service providers (including multi-disciplinary networks at international, national, regional or local levels);
  • mutual learning, identifying and exchange of best practices, development of working methods which may be transferable to other participating countries;
  • analytical activities, including data collection, statistics, surveys, research, etc.;
  • exchange and provision of information and development of information tools;
  • capacity building for professionals;
  • dissemination and awareness raising activities;
  • training activities can also be funded under this call, as long as they are of ancillary nature and not the main purpose of the project.

Eligibility Criteria

In order to be eligible, the applicants (beneficiaries and affiliated entities) must:

• be legal entities (public or private bodies)
• be established in one of the eligible countries, i.e.:
  • EU Member States (including overseas countries and territories (OCTs), excluding Denmark)
  • non-EU countries:
    • countries associated to the Justice Programme or countries which are in ongoing negotiations for an association agreement and where the agreement enters into force before grant signature.
• In addition, under the priorities 1 and 2:
  • Organisations which are profit-oriented must submit applications in partnership with public entities or private non-profit-oriented organisations.
  • Projects must be transnational and involve organisations from at least two participating countries.
• In addition, under the priority 3:
  • In the area of civil and commercial matters, the application must be submitted by the officially appointed members of EJN in civil and commercial matters, or by the national authorities, courts and professional associations representing the officially appointed members of EJN in civil and commercial matters;
  • In the area of criminal matters, the application must be submitted by national authorities, courts, prosecution services and professional associations representing them;
  • Only one application per participating country will be accepted. Projects do not need to have a transnational aspect.

For more information, visit European Commission.