Defence Rights: International and European Developments

The growing internationalisation and Europeanisation of criminal procedures create new and
additional challenges to traditional defence rights.

Hence, the Ghent Bar Association, as part of its bicentennial celebration, the Bar Association
of The Hague, hosting the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and the International
Criminal Court (ICC), and Ghent University, conducting lead research on international
and European criminal policy, have joined their forces by exploring and addressing these
challenges during an international conference, entitled ‘Defence Rights: International and
European Developments’, held in Ghent on 23 November 2012, of which the current volume
is the conference book.

The book has a double focus: defence rights before the ICC respectively EU defence rights.

Whereas international criminal tribunals, especially the ICC, should play an exemplary role
when it comes to the right to fair trial and adequate access to a lawyer, reality proves to be
troublesome. This book addresses key issues in this respect: what is the status questionis
of the defence position and procedural rights before international criminal tribunals, more
specifically the ICC? Has the Rome statute lived up to its expectations after a decade of
its application? Can defence before international tribunals keep functioning without a Bar?
What are the needs for such a defence to be adequate, knowing that it balances on the
borderline between the Anglo-Saxon legal system and ours? What lessons can be learnt
from this? What about victims’ rights, unexplored territory for international criminal law?

At the same time, defence and procedural rights are developing as a result of different EU
Directives which have been or are now being negotiated. This is of major importance to every
penalist, even in strictly national cases. This book informs about and critically assesses the
entire EU ‘Roadmap for strengthening procedural rights of suspected of accused persons in
criminal proceedings’. The EU Directive on the right to interpretation and translation in criminal
proceedings and the anticipated proposal on special safeguards in criminal procedures for
suspected or accused persons who are vulnerable (especially children, the mentally ill and
the mentally disabled) pass in review. Also the EU-Directives on the right to information in
criminal procedure and on the right of access to a lawyer in criminal proceedings and on
the right to communicate upon arrest (Salduz-Directive), which are about to revolutionize
traditional domestic criminal procedural law, are being thoroughly assessed. Further, the book
addresses the important implications and challenges for the legal position of detainees as a
result of the recent Framework Decision on the mutual recognition of custodial sentences and
measures involving deprivation of liberty. Finally, awareness is raised concerning the future
of procedural rights in the framework of cross-border evidence gathering and admissibility.

This book is essential reading for both defence practitioners and scholars taking an interest
in defence and procedural rights in criminal matters.

Prof. dr. Gert Vermeulen is full professor of international and European criminal law and department chair criminal law and criminology at Ghent University, director of the Institute for International Research on Criminal Policy (IRCP) and extraordinary professor of evidence at Maastricht University.