The aims of MEDEL are as follows:

• Protection of judicial independence,

• Unconditional respect for the values of democracy and the Rule of law,

• Promotion of the European democratic legal culture

• Democratisation of the judiciary,

• Freedom of expression, meeting and association for judges and public prosecutors,

• Respect for the rights and freedoms of minorities and divergent groups, in particular the rights of immigrants and of the most impoverished, with a view to social emancipation of the weakest.

Thus, in its Declaration of Palermo (1993), MEDEL laid the foundations for a European Statute of the Judiciary. Today, many of the principles of that Declaration are enshrined in the European Charter on the Statute of Judges, which was drafted in consultation with MEDEL. Three years later, in March 1996 in Naples, MEDEL adopted the Declaration on the Principles of Public Prosecution.

The associations affiliated with MEDEL represent judges as well as public prosecutors: indeed it is the responsibility of both groups to commit to the same values. MEDEL represents a judiciary striving in particular to give effect to those values enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights.

 

Presentation of Medel