Mr Antonio Vercher Noguera (Spain), CCPE President, took an extensive part in the Training Program for Spanish prosecutors on a New Model of Criminal Procedure from the Fundamental Rights Perspective organised on 23-24 May 2022 in Madrid by Spanish authorities. The program pursued the objective of implementation in the Spanish criminal justice system of a model based on the adversarial system, with a legal tendency leading to the configuration of the Public Prosecutor's Office as an investigative body and the judge as guarantor of constitutional rights.

Mr Vercher delivered lectures on the position and action of prosecutors in rights-based criminal proceedings, underlining a number of standards in relevant CCPE Opinions, and in particular the Opinion No. 9 (2014) on European norms and principles concerning prosecutors, including Rome Charter, Opinion No. 10 (2015) on the role of prosecutors in criminal investigations, Opinion No. 15 (2020) on the role of prosecutors in emergency situations, in particular when facing a pandemic, and Opinion No. 16 (2021) on implications of the decisions of international courts and treaty bodies as regards the practical independence of prosecutors.

The audience and the organisers of the Training Program highly appreciated the CCPE’s contribution to the development of relevant standards for the prosecutorial profession.