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Cooperation with Council of Europe – 

Programme Partner

“The Council of Europe acted as a donor partner 
that allowed us to work closely with the Czech and 
Norwegian partners for achieving the CZ 15 Programme 
goals. Openness and full engagement of the partners 
created an environment for smooth and efficient 
co-operation. Implementing of the projects are 
never seamless the dedication and commitment 
of the Ministry of Justice, Probation and Mediation 
Services, Prison Services of the Czech Republic and 
the Norwegian partners coupled with the thorough 
monitoring from the Ministry of Finance helped 
to overcome all the issued and led to successful 
implementation of the programme.

Implementation of the Judicial Capacity Building  
Co-operation programme and its pre-defined 
projects helped the Czech judicial authorities to 
address the increasing demands for modernization 
and e-justice through introduction of video-
conferencing in court proceedings in order to 
improve the efficiency and quality of court services 
provided to the citizens. Czech Republic is already 
considered to be one of the 17 member states 
with the most advanced ICT availability and use 
for support and court management purposes 
in all courts and the implemented programme 
strengthened this position even further.

The work of the Correctional Services was equally 
important as it addressed the issues of raised in by  
the CPT in their last monitoring report of 2014 as 
material conditions and regime, detention of foreign 
nationals, conditions of detention in the prison 
establishments and availability of out-of–the–cell 
activities. Through the implementation of the 5 pre-
defined projects in the framework of this programme, 
the Correctional Services increased the number of  
the programmes for the inmates to gain specific 
life-skills as well as certain trade-skills to be better 
prepared for the release; in parallel, the qualifications 
and skills of the prison staff was enhanced as the 
newly developed training and education programmes 
focused on increasing their professionalism.”

Sophio Gelashvili & Raluca Ivan
Council of Europe