There is an ever increasing free movement of citizens and businesses in the European Single Market. This has created a need for lawyers from different Member States to familiarise themselves with the legal systems of their European neighbours.

A training web-portal would remedy the lack of information about courses for lawyers and other legal practitioners in a cross-border context. The Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE) was awarded a grant from the European Commission (EC) to implement the project known as the ‘European Training Platform’ (ETP). After the two-year implementation period of the project, it is envisaged that the ETP will become availableon the European Union’s e-Justice portal and thus made available to all legal practitioners in various member states.

Following a tender procedure organised by the CCBE in order to subcontract the project’s IT works, local software companies ICON (www.icon.com.mt) and Crimsonwing (www.crimsonwing.com) teamed up to fuse the skills and technologies required to produce this web-tool which is scheduled to be launched later on this year.

The ETP is a key building block of the European vision to increase and facilitate cooperation amongst Europeans in the field of legal training. The IT platform being built will facilitate information exchange about legal training by centralising information about existing legal courses from recognised training providers throughout Europe.