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Fair Trials is actively seeking to promote the use of EU law in domestic criminal proceedings and encourage criminal practitioners to see the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) in Luxembourg as a regular and accessible forum.
We’ve created a working group within our LEAP network dedicated to supporting practitioners initiating references to the CJEU, the mechanism by which a national court examining a case can refer questions to CJEU in order to clarify the scope and interpretation of EU law.
We’ve developed a bunch of materials available on our website to encourage criminal practitioners to rely on EU law in domestic proceedings and turn to the CJEU to challenge systemic issues that undermine criminal defence where interpretations of EU law could assist in improving the situation.
Toolkit on the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights – September 2020
Toolkit on the Access to a Lawyer Directive – August 2020
Toolkit on the Right to Information Directive – August 2020
Toolkit on the Right to Interpretation and Translation Directive – August 2020
Toolkit on the Presumption of Innocence and the Right to be present Directive – October 2020
Toolkit on the Legal Aid Directive – November 2020
Toolkit on the Children Directive (Implementation Toolkit) – May 2018
Using EU law in Criminal Practice Toolkit – March 2015
(general introduction on how to use EU law in national proceedings)
Mapping document on the CJEU case-law on EU Criminal Justice Measures – July 2020
Toolkit on preliminary ruling requests for the CJEU – July 2020
EU law resources Document – November 2020
(listing of EU law and guidance sources on suspects and accused persons' rights in criminal proceedings).
Please note that online courses were produced in 2016. While they provide useful practical guidance, we invite you to refer to the Toolkits referred above for up to date information.
We’re also happy to help support you with EU law expertise on individual cases – so feel free to contact us directly.
Until 2010, there were virtually no measures of EU law regulating ordinary criminal proceedings within the Member States, whilst cross-border measures were adopted, starting with the European Arrest Warrant ("EAW"). In 2009, the EU launched an ambitious project to strengthen mutual trust between Member States’ judicial authorities by protecting criminal defence rights through EU law, called the Roadmap for strengthening procedural rights, adopted in response to a perceived lack of confidence between Member States’ justice systems.
The efforts of Fair Trials, with the support of our LEAP network, were instrumental in the creation of the EU Procedural Rights Directives – a suite of Directives that protect fundamental rights of defendants. These Directives set minimum standards that all EU Member States must enforce in domestic criminal proceedings:
Designed to build upon the European Convention on Human Rights (“ECHR”), these measures come full of promise: the citizen gets new, directly effective rights and the criminal court becomes a frontline enforcer EU law, potentially at the expense of inadequate national laws; the criminal judge can get help from Luxembourg, while the case is still live, lessening recourse to European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, with the delayed justice this entails. That is the theory.
In practice, there is still a lot to do to fully implement and guarantee suspect’s and accused person’s rights under the EU Procedural Rights Directives. In this respect, the CJEU has an important role to play clarifying questions of interpretation of EU law and in facilitating the process of implementation of the EU Procedural Rights Directives by explaining their proper interpretation. This represents a real opportunity.
