European Lawyers Foundation’s Network of EU Bars

ongoing

The European Lawyers Foundation (ELF) is an independent non-profit network of 35 members - 31 national and local bars, 2 Bar training schools and 2 EU-wide organisations of bars (ELF and the CCBE), representing a total of 19 Member States. ELF’s mission is to promote access to justice, training of lawyers, activities relating to the exercise of the profession of lawyer, the rule of law and substantive developments in the law itself, the defence of human rights, and international justice. ELF works in 3 out of the 4 priorities that the call for proposals identifies in the area of access to justice, namely: (1) rule of law; (2) rights of suspects and accused in criminal proceedings; and (3) e-Justice. ELF also works in other areas such as the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU (covering several of its rights), training lawyers in EU law, and the promotion of EU instruments in the field of criminal and civil law. With a 2026 operating grant, ELF will increase its work in these fields, translated, inter alia, into an increase of lawyers’ knowledge about the procedural rights of suspects and accused in criminal proceedings, raising awareness about the impact of the EU’s policy on “Justice for Growth” in their daily practice, and enabling lawyers to become more familiar with the more relevant European e-Justice functionalities. Through the operating grant, we will continue offering EU lawyers high quality free-of-charge webinars in EU law, which have provided excellent results in previous years. The work of ELFNetwork will also supplement and enhance the work we carry out in other (ongoing and past) EU-funded projects, so increasing the EU added value of the operating grant and of these other EU-funded projects, while ensuring coordination between different EU-funded actions. ELF has been a beneficiary of operating grants funded by the Justice Programme since 2022, which has been key to increasing the contribution of lawyers to better access to justice in the EU.