The main objectives are to facilitate and support judicial cooperation in civil and criminal matters, and to promote the rule of law, independence and impartiality of the judiciary, by supporting the efforts to improve the effectiveness of national justice systems, and the effective enforcement of decisions. Specifically, projects that promote better enforcement of judicial decisions through better procedures, case handling and cooperation in cross-border civil and commercial disputes. Also, projects that improve the situation of children involved in civil cases e.g. through better procedures, case-handling and cooperation in family law areas such as parental responsibility, international child abduction and maintenance or issues relating to civil status of children. Lastly, the ones that are facilitating cross-border procedures, e.g, on service of documents and taking of evidence, on successions or cross-border circulation of public documents, through better information and awareness-raising.

Proposals that do not follow the above lines may still be awarded funding, only if applicants can justify this by the necessity to improve the implementation and application of the civil or criminal justice EU acquis on the basis of an evidence-based needs assessment, showing that more activities are required for the proper application of EU law in the field to be covered.

Furthermore, this Call supports Member States, for setting up and strengthening of national networks active in the area of judicial cooperation in civil and criminal matters. Specifically, in the area of civil and commercial matters support will be provided to the members of the European Judicial Network (EJN) in civil and commercial matters and to the national authorities, courts and professional associations they represent, in order to ensure better implementation and case-handling under the civil justice legislation. Additionally, in the area of criminal matters support will be provided to national authorities, courts, prosecution services and professional associations that represent them, in setting up and/or strengthening of national networks in order to ensure better implementation of EU judicial cooperation instruments in criminal matters.

Last but not least, the Call supports the Member States for their connection to the European Criminal Record Information System – Third Country Nationals system (ECRIS-TCN). The main objective of this priority is to support projects implementing the needed adaptations of the national criminal records systems for the linking and exchange of fingerprints of convicted third country nationals (TCN) to identify the Member States holding criminal record information with the ECRIS-TCN central system. Thus, it will be easier to identify the Member States which are the convicting ones and this will encourage more systematic use of ECRIS for TCN significantly increasing the current use of the system.