European Lawyers Foundation’s Network of EU Bars

ongoing

The European Lawyers Foundation (ELF) is an independent non-profit network of 35 members, of which 31 are national and local bars, two are Bars’ training schools and two are EU-wide organisations of bars (ELF and the CCBE), representing a total of 19 EU 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 three out of the four priorities that the call for proposals identifies in the area of access to justice, namely: (1) rule of law; (2) rights of the suspects and/or accused persons in criminal proceedings; and (3) e-Justice. Furthermore, ELF effectively works in other areas such as the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU (covering directly several of its rights), the training of lawyers in EU law, and the promotion of EU instruments in the field of criminal and civil law. Through an operating grant, ELF will increase its work in these fields, translated, inter alia, into raising more awareness of the importance of the rule of law in the EU, the increase of EU lawyers’ knowledge about the procedural rights of suspects and accused persons in criminal proceedings, and by addressing various issues related to the digitalisation of justice in the EU as a fundamental tool to improve access to justice. The work of ELFNetwork will supplement and enhance the work we carry out in other (ongoing and past) EU-funded projects and will continue training in important areas such as anti-money laundering. ELF has been a beneficiary of operating grants funded by the Justice Programme since 2022, a support which has been key to increasing the contribution of EU lawyers to better access to justice in the EU.