Seminar: EU procedural guarantees for suspected and accused persons in criminal proceedings
The seminar will specifically tackle recent EU legislation on heightening the procedural rights of suspected and accused persons, and relevant CJEU and ECtHR case law on fundamental rights. The main theme besides discussing the individual instruments however is to demonstrate how EU mutual recognition instruments in criminal matters are inevitably embedded in a fundamental rights context and how the EU procedural guarantees in criminal procedures legislation facilitates the application of such instruments by ensuring minimum standards of protection shared by all EU Member States.
The seminar will examine in detail how Charter provisions are mapped out in EU secondary legislation to provide a fuller set of fundamental rights guarantees. In this vein, the following instruments will be discussed: Directive 2010/64/EU on the right to interpretation and translation in criminal proceedings; Directive 2012/13/EU on the right to information in criminal proceedings; Directive 2013/48/EU on the right of access to a lawyer in criminal proceedings and in European arrest warrant proceedings and the right to have a third party informed upon deprivation of liberty and to communicate with third persons and with consular authorities while deprived of liberty; Directive 2016/343/EU on the strengthening of certain aspects of the presumption of innocence and of the right to be present at the trial in criminal proceedings; Directive 2016/800/EU on procedural safeguards for children who are suspects or accused persons in criminal proceedings and Directive (EU) 2016/1919 on legal aid for suspects and accused persons in criminal proceedings and for requested persons in European arrest warrant proceedings.
Special consideration will be given to those EU procedural guarantees instruments which enhance the execution of European Arrest Warrants by ensuring that the level of available procedural guarantees is now harmonised with respect to legal assistance and legal aid.