On Monday 20 October, the European Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs (JURI) and Subcommittee on Human Rights (DROI) held a joint meeting on the protection of lawyers worldwide. In particular, this involved leading discussions on the new ‘Council of Europe Convention for the Protection of the Profession of Lawyers’ (see EUROPE 13599/28), which was definitively adopted last May.
A number of speakers gave their views on the issue, including the UN Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers, Margaret Satterthwaite, the Council of Europe’s Director General for Human Rights and the Rule of Law, Gianluca Esposito, and Laurent Pettiti of the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe and President of the Working Group on the Convention of the Protection of the Profession of Lawyers.
The session opened with Ramla Dahmani’s testimony on the situation of her sister, the Tunisian lawyer Sonia Dahmani, detained in La Manouba prison (Tunisia).
“Her only crime: defending”, she said, describing the disgraceful conditions of detention and the increasing number of prosecutions for opinion offences under Decree 54.
Promulgated in 2022 in Tunisia, this decree-law on combating offences relating to information and communication systems has led to a number of arrests and trials of political activists and journalists, and is denounced as a threat to freedom of expression and political activism.
“She was arrested for words”, insisted Ramla Dahmani, who called on the European Union to support the Tunisian authorities on condition that fundamental rights are respected.
For Margaret Satterthwaite, “the protection of lawyers is synonymous with the protection of human rights”.
The Council of Europe Convention, she explained, establishes for the first time binding standards aimed at guaranteeing the independence, security and integrity of the profession, as well as a monitoring mechanism and an urgency procedure.
Gianluca Esposito emphasised the added value of the treaty, which protects both lawyers and their professional associations, and pointed out that it will enter into force after eight ratifications. “There can be no justice without lawyers”, he reiterated, urging the European Union to sign up as soon as possible.
Laurent Pettiti welcomed this leverage, which has already led several countries to revise their legislation upwards. (Original version in French by Nithya Paquiry)