To begin with, over 3,500 beneficiaries of the training courses will be able, through the distance training, to deal with the contents which fully correspond to the annual continuous training programme for the judges and prosecutors for 2020, the training programme for the members of other judicial professions, the initial training programme, and the programme of compulsory training courses envisaged by special laws. The Academy is planning to extend the number of training courses, as well as the number of beneficiaries thereof in the forthcoming period.

“As of 2017, the Judicial Academy, in cooperation with the EU projects, has been developing new applications in order to improve the methodology of implementation of the adopted curricula and has introduced innovative methods of work, such as “distance training“. The new equipment, which the Judicial Academy received through the EU–IPA project by the end of 2019, enabled setting up of the Data Centre for the support to the developed applications”, says Mr. Nenad Vujić, the Director of the Judicial Academy.

Owing to the assistance from the European Union, the Judicial Academy has purchased the ICT equipment for the setting up of a modern data centre, the location for urgent data recovery, and everyday functioning of the system on the level of an individual user.

As the Director Vujić put it, the Judicial Academy is not offering only passive dealing with the contents of its training courses, but will also organize interactive instruction and lectures in real time.

“In addition to video and interactive training courses, the contents of which are prepared in advance, the provision of online training courses in real time will also be enabled. This means that the lecturers will be able to provide the training courses which the trainees will attend from their computers from any location, with full access to the working materials used by the lecturers. Also, the trainees will be enabled direct communication with the lecturers, so that through interactive access, they will participate in the resolution of the presented problems and questions. At the end of a training course, our beneficiaries will evaluate the entire training course by filling out the questionnaires.”

The European Union strongly supports Serbia in the reform of the judiciary. Namely, in recent years, a very significant progress was made in the reduction of the backlog in cases and harmonization of the judicial practice, largely owing to the assistance from the IPA funds.