Protection of fundamental rights and access to legal aid for remand prisoners in the EU

From September 2017 until April 2019, the CNRS (Laboratories SAGE (Strasbourg), CESDIP (Saint Quentin en Yvelines)) and the European Prison Litigation Network coordinated a research project on the protection of fundamental rights and access to legal aid for remand prisoners in the European Union, together with partner universities and NGOs from nine European countries

This project aimed at strengthening the judicial protection of fundamental rights of remand prisoners in the European Union and promoting harmonisation of national legislations in the field of access to rights and to court for remand prisoners.

The project gathered ten partners from European countries : CNRS (Laboratories SAGE and CESDIP), European Prison Litigation Network, University of Utrecht, Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Dortmund, University of Florence, Bulgarian Helsinki Committee, University of Ghent, General Council of the Spanish Bar, University of Comillas.

As regard to the violation of fundamental rights in detention, the legal aid systems, the tools giving access to the law and the measures adopted to allow for the intervention of lawyers in prison greatly differ depending on the country. Such differences largely account for the great disparities observed with regards to access to a judge and the effectiveness of rights. As a matter of fact, it appears that access to legal resources in detention and the external intermediaries for prisoners’ complaints are critical factors in the judicial protection in detention. In addition, the attention devoted to this dimension is greatly insufficient at the European level, whether EU law or ECHR law is concerned.

Building on these observations, the project aimed at mapping laws and practices in the EU as regard to legal aid with the aim of protecting the rights of prisoners in pretrial detention (conditions of detention and aspects which have an impact on criminal proceedings: security, transfers, geographic distance…) in nine countries of the EU (Czech Republic, Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Spain). The project has also analysed the conditions for the inclusion in European law of procedural obligations regarding legal aid for remand prisoners and intends to launch an advocacy campaign in this regard.

This project was funded by the European Union’s Justice Programme (2014-2020).

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