The UK has been going through waves of Cleggmania, but has largely ignored the EU as it undergoes the process of how it will be governed for the next five years. Now the EU has published its own plans for the next five years in the justice sector. The long-awaited Stockholm Programme Action Plan has landed, and the only dust cloud in sight is caused by the weight of its conclusions as it thumps on to the table.

(Since it is election time, you will permit me to make a petty political point at the beginning. I don’t want to hear again any mutterings about a democratic deficit in EU decision-making: the UK has no right to complain when, if each of the three main parties obtained 30% of the vote, the result would be approximately 100 seats for the Lib Dems, 200 for the Conservatives, and 300 for Labour.)

Regular readers will know that, at the end of last year, EU justice ministers agreed a broad plan for justice for the next five years. It was the European Commission’s responsibility to fill out the details in an Action Plan, and this they have now done. Although critics regularly complain that the EU has run out of ideas, there is no sign of this here, since the schedule annexed to the Action Plan, which lists the various actions that the EU will undertake, runs to 59 pages, with hundreds of detailed policy actions. Because the Stockholm Programme covers both home affairs and justice matters, some of these cover immigration and security, but there are many dozens which relate to the direct interests of lawyers and lawyers’ organisations.

I will speak this week about just three: an ‘Erasmus-style’ exchange programmes for judicial authorities and legal professionals; a European Law Institute; and European training for all legal professions. I have written about some of the others which appear in the schedule in the recent past: the minimum procedural safeguards for suspects and defendants, the emphasis on e-justice, and work on European contract law.

The Erasmus programme is one of the EU’s grand success stories. In brief, it enables students to study for a period at a university in another member state. Two million have participated since it started in 1987, and more than 180,000 take part each year, of whom more than 10,000 are law students. Around 90% of European universities are in the network. (Regarding the UK, the very interesting statistics tell their own story: students from other EU countries find the UK an attractive destination for their studies, whereas few UK students venture abroad.) Now there is a proposal to extend this to lawyers, by means of pilot projects in 2010-2012.

What about a European Law Institute? This is being pushed by the new commissioner for justice, Viviane Reding. In a recent speech, she highlighted that the EU is a community of laws, which distinguishes it from other international cooperation – for instance, it has its own court system to enforce those laws. But there is still no common judicial culture. She believes that lawyers are culturally conservative, sticking to their own national laws and legal systems. Therefore, she favours creating a European Law Institute that will bring together lawyers, academics and others from around the EU to work together on EU law and an EU law culture. It would be something like the Law Commission, something like the Judicial Studies Board, something like a university – all mixed in one.

As for an Action Plan on European training for all legal professions, this is a welcome advance. So far, the commission has made it easy for European law training for judges and prosecutors, since they are employed by the state. But lawyers have always been second-class citizens, having to apply and pay at least in part for their own training. Now there is a commitment to see lawyers on the same footing as judges and prosecutors – at last.

So, there is no sign of intellectual bankruptcy at European level, rather a ferment of ideas to ensure that our future is better than our past. (I am sorry, I have descended into election speak. It must be contagious.)

Jonathan Goldsmith is the secretary general of the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe, which represents more than 700,000 European lawyers through its member bars and law societies