Brussels, 05/04/2002 (Agence Europe) - At a public hearing on Wednesday organised by the European Parliament Greens/EFA group on the protection of the accused in criminal proceedings, lawyers and MEPs criticised the "two-tier" European justice policy (in the words of Belgian MEP Pierre Jonckheer) that had arisen from the adoption of repressive texts like the European arrest warrant without any real common minimum standards for proceedings. The European Commission's initiative to open a debate on the issue of minimum standards for the rights of suspects in criminal proceedings was welcomed, but the people participating in the hearing generally felt that the publication document published at the beginning of the year did not go far enough (see EUROPE of 8 February, p.13). The document will be followed in June by a Green Paper, and then at the beginning of next year by a draft framework decision that the European Commission hopes will come into force in 2004, explained a Commission representative who attended the hearing.
Opening the hearing, Dutch MEP Kathalijne Buitenweg said that with instruments like the European arrest warrant, judges no longer needed to check, so much more detailed common rules of procedure were needed. Stephen Jakobi of Fair Trials Abroad that provides assistance to people on trial outside their home country, was particularly critical. He launched the debate by explaining that the chances of not getting found guilty in the EU if one is a national of another country are very slim, and hoped that the situation would one day arise in the EU of there no longer being any differences depending on whether one is a national of the country in question or not. He slammed the Council of Ministers' assuming (wrongly, in his eyes) that the European Human Rights Convention was applied properly across the EU. Stephen Jakobi although the European Commission had followed the Council's line to date, the work that had begun on minimum guarantees was a good sign. The development of mutual recognition has to be accompanied by an assurance that fundamental rights are really being recognised in practice since otherwise one faced the risk of effective legal systems being forced to recognise decisions taken by badly managed legal systems, he pointed out. Fair Trials Abroad is particularly keen to ensure that translators and interpreters are provided during legal proceedings.
Caroline Morgan, who is responsible for this issue at the European Commission, attended the hearing and presented and defended the European Commission's initiative, taken to strengthen citizens' freedom of movement and the necessary confidence to allow mutual recognition between judicial systems in the EU. Responding to criticisms with regard to prudence in the consultation document, she said that the Green Paper in June would provide more details. She laid great emphasis on the fact that the fact that the decision was the sole responsibility of Member States made it more likely for the proposals to have a "realistic" chance of being adopted, which is a "limiting factor". The consultation document gives no details and quotes no studies into the situation in the Member States. The Commission services said that due to lack of time, it wasn't possible to launch any broad surveys, but that Member States had been sent a questionnaire with the aim of supplementing existing studies and were expected to respond by 15 April. By the same date, the European Commission is hoping to receive contributions on the issue of procedural guarantees from lawyers. Of the forty or so options it has received to date, only one was written by a practising lawyer. To supplement this work, a study is being carried out into provisional liberty (bail) and a document will be published on detention conditions. The Commission also announced that at the beginning of 2003, a document would be published on establishing proof.
Françoise Tulkens, a judge at the European Court of Human Rights, also attended the hearing to discuss the contribution of the European Convention on Human Rights and the Court itself in this area. The MEPs and lawyers present, such as Elena Paciotti (Democratici di sinistra MEP) stressed that the Court's rulings were rarely implemented and that the Convention itself, despite its great importance, was sometimes too vague. The judge herself highlighted the importance of working much more on the issue of enforcing rulings.
Introduction to EP plenary session (8/10 April)