We believe Europe should be a beacon of respect for fair trial rights across the globe, with countries working together to ensure that every person accused of a crime is given a fair trial.

In the EU alone there are eight million people accused of crimes. Ensuring access to justice means making sure that they have access to all of the protections that come with procedural defence rights. As well as protecting the people accused of crimes, it will also increase trust in justice systems, and provide a sound basis for cooperation between countries.

We want to see the right of access to a lawyer respected everywhere. This is the most important way of ensuring that other rights are being respected.

The next best way of ensuring rights are protected in the initial stages are through audio-visual recording. Audio-visual recording of police interrogations can help prevent undue compulsion, torture and other ill-treatment during questioning, as well as provide protection to police officials against false allegations. Audio-visual recording can also help secure reliable evidence for criminal proceedings, offering a key protection against false confessions and wrongful convictions.

The US-based Innocence Project highlights the importance of audio-visual recording to prevent miscarriages of justice: “the entire interrogation – during the time in which a reasonable person in the subject’s position would consider himself to be in custody and a law enforcement officer’s questioning is likely to elicit incriminating responses – should be electronically recorded. This is simply the only way to create an objective record of what transpired during the course of the interrogation process”.

Working with our network of legal experts from across Europe (the Legal Experts Advisory Panel (LEAP)  we have led calls for action by the European Union to improve standards of criminal justice.

Our work for access to justice has been wide-ranging, including:

• Helping people to understand their rights and access local expertise by producing Notes of Advice on criminal justice systems in Europe.
• Using human stories of injustice from our casework to demonstrate the need for reforms;
• Working with our partners and networks to understand the barriers to fair trials across Europe and to design solutions;
• Working for the proper implementation of EU law, through strategic litigation and training; We have, for example,  intervened in a case at the European Court of Human Rights to encourage the Court to look at remedies when proper access to a lawyer is not provided. Much of this work is done through or involving our LEAP network.
• Working with partners we have mapped the use of audio-visual recording across the EU and beyond. The research gathered information on legislation and practice through our LEAP network, as well as academic literature and other relevant materials.

Fair Trials is now a recognised expert and leading voice for justice in Europe and our work is paying off:

• We have helped to secure ground-breaking and enforceable new laws which guarantee crucial defence rights to all suspects and defendants across the whole of the EU;
• We have ensured that continued work for fair trials in Europe has remained on the agenda;
• We have built a network of fair trials defenders in Europe, and have provided training to practitioners from across the EU;
• We have helped countless people accused of crimes in Europe to access information on their rights and local sources of support and have prevented serious cases of injustice. 

We are now closer than ever before to achieving justice in Europe – but much more remains to be done. You can help us to reach this goal: get involved and support our work.