Fair Trials is the global criminal justice watchdog, campaigning for fairness, equality and justice

In her keynote address at the LEAP Annual Conference in Athens in February, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers, Margaret Satterthwaite, examines the growing threats facing independent justice systems and the crucial role of lawyers in protecting the right to a fair trial.

The right to interpretation and translation in criminal proceedings is fundamental to a fair trial, yet fifteen years after the adoption of Directive 2010/64/EU, significant and systemic failures persist across EU Member States. Our research showed that in 2020, the transposition of the Directive into the law of Member States had been broadly completed.