For Julia Laffranque human beings and human rights always come first.
Together with the HELP programme of the Council of Europe, Julia prepared a course on judicial ethics for European judges. She has also been deeply involved in European law moot courts and other Council of Europe and European Court of Human Rights related teaching activities and competitions for students, she sees it next to judging as one of her missions to engage future generations into respecting human rights.
In 2004 when Julia became the youngest national Supreme Court judge in Estonia, she also became member of CCJE and was soon after elected as the president of the Consultative Council of European Judges (2006-2010). During her presidency, the Consultative Council of European Judges received the award: “Justice in the World” for promoting judicial independence.
In 2016 she was elected the best trainer of Estonian judges for her tailor-made course on recent case law of the ECHR, which she regularly held for Estonian judges while she was a judge in Strasbourg.
When Estonia held the Presidency of the Council of Europe, Ms Laffranque promoted Estonia’s culture among other things, by wearing traditional folk costume and showing Estonian films at the European Court of Human Rights.
It is no secret that Julia Laffranque’s principal hobby is amateur acting and theatre: she has been member of Vilde Teater in Estonia and a Tagora Theatre in Strasbourg. In 2015 she created the Theatre Club of the European Court of Human Rights: “Court in the Act”. They also performed a play about Estonia’s history and other plays with relevance to human rights in the theatre club open to all visitors from Strasbourg. She has directed several children’s plays with the Estonian School in Strasbourg.
The project “75 women in 75 years of Council of Europe history” is organised by the Delegation of the European Union to the Council of Europe with the Council of Europe and the Permanent Representations of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.
