International development cooperation

This is the international performance aspect of the General Council of the Judiciary that deals with supporting the reformation, modernisation, institutional strengthening and professionalization processes of the judicial powers, providing technical assistance in the identification, formulation, direction and execution of development cooperation programmes and projects.

This is carried out through international cooperation programmes and projects, with a twin financing source: Spanish in the case of projects financed by the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation (AECI in Spanish); and International, specially by the European Commission (through Europaid), the United Nations Development Programme, the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank, and the World Bank Institute among others. 

Within the programmes of bilateral nature, the following may be highlighted among those already developed: 

  • Financed by the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, Dominican Republic, Argentina, Bolivia, Morocco, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria and Albania.
  • With European funding, either by direct allocation – as in the case of Guinea – or as a result of a tender in twinning projects in Poland,  Bulgaria, Hungary, Albania.

Among the programmes and projects of multilateral or regional scope the following may be mentioned:

  • Euromed/Justice Programme, also of European financing, where the beneficiaries are Algeria, Israel, Jordan, The Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Syria, Tunisia and Turkey.

From a subject-matter point of view, the aforementioned projects are referred – practically entirely – to areas where there is a correspondence in jurisdiction and function with those of the General Council of the Judiciary, or those where the technical organs or the Spanish judges and magistrates have special qualifications. 

Those subject-matter areas are basically the following: 

  • Legislative advice
  • Legal profession
  • Initial and continuous judicial training
  • Judicial inspection
  • Judicial documentation
  • Judiciary’s management and administration
  • Judicial office
  • Access to the law
  • International legal cooperation.