The target audience in need for training on the Charter and its field of application goes beyond the judiciary and practicing lawyers. As the Council of the European Union pointed out: “Preventing fundamental rights violations demands adequate training of all the actors in the Charter enforcement chain, including NHRIs, equality bodies and civil society organisations. […] The Council underlines the importance of universities and legal practitioners’ training schools in the promotion of knowledge on the Charter, through academic research and training activities, also in cooperation with the Union institutions, national authorities and civil society organisations.”
The Council also called “on Member States to explore further avenues to improve the proficiency of the judiciary and other justice practitioners on the Charter, drawing on dedicated training material, including e-learning tools” 2, suggesting that Member States encourage the various communities of legal practitioners to put a renewed emphasis on the application of the Charter at national level also by making use of training resources and material as developed by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA).
FRA is the independent EU fundamental rights expert body offering fundamental rights assistance and advice to the EU and its Member States. FRA’s findings show that the Charter’s potential at national level is not yet fully used. Against this background, FRA started to develop training material including e-learning courses that can be used by trainers when providing Charter trainings to relevant groups of legal practitioners. This trainer’s manual aims at providing guidance on both the organisation and the implementation of such trainings based on a series of case studies, which will be extended in the future. Comments and suggestions can be sent to charter@fra.europa.eu. The manual is best used in combination with other FRA Charter resources and material such as the database Charterpedia (https://fra.europa.eu/en/eucharter) and the Handbook “Applying the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union in law and policymaking at national level”.
