With loads of support given to the ECBA by the Slovak Bar Association, and foremost the President Stefan Detvai, who welcomed us at the Cocktail Reception, and its members Katarina Mareckova and Juraj Kolesar, who helped us organizing the conference, we were able to approach the East of Europe once more and find out that the major concerns of our profession are more or less the same all over the European Union and even beyond its momentary borders as we were able also to welcome colleagues from Croatia, Latvia and many more. The ever expanding size of our association made clear that the topic of the Bratislava conference “The fair trial principle under pressure: Between the growing restrictions on legal aid and the `risk of coercion` to plea bargain?” is a general concern of the European defender.
Our long time companion Dean Spielmann gave a good introduction to the fundamental right of legal aid from the point of view of a judge at the ECHR. How such fundamental rights are practically handled in national jurisdictions could be seen in the various presentations about e.g. the Austrian, Slovak, Dutch and Bulgarian legal aid systems. Clear indications were given that any legal aid system can only be as good as its financial funding, which in many member states consists of direct payments to the lawyers but in others consists of “indirect” payments to the bar associations` pension funds, which sometimes makes it almost impossible for lawyers to invest enough time in legal aid cases as they will only receive their payments when they retire. Quite interesting discussions followed those different approaches.
The session on eJustice was introduced by Louise Hodges, who summarised the main objectives of Communication from the European Commission to create a European portal designed to facilitate access to justice by citizens and businesses across Europe and the reinforcement of judicial co-operation, on the basis of existing legal instruments. The most important developments related to criminal justice will be the interconnection of criminal records, the creation of a network of secure exchanges for information among judicial authorities, facilitation of the use of IT communications in criminal justice, for example video conferencing and automated aids for translation and a list of interpreters and translators. Mr Joaquin Bayo Delgado of the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) highlighted the current developments in the proposed framework decision on data protection in police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters and how this related to the eJustice programme. He concluded that the entering into force of the framework decision on data protection should be a pre-condition to the eJustice programme progressing, there should be restrictions on the collation and use of the material other than for criminal proceedings, there should be robust procedures for updating information and there should be coordination among national Data Protection Agencies (DAPs) and the EDPA (as DPA for the EC). Delegates raised many areas of concern during the discussion, particularly related to the inaccuracy and poor maintenance of national criminal databases, and experiences of poor quality of interpretation and translation having a major impact on criminal cases. There will be rapid developments in this area over the next few years which will directly impact on criminal justice on a national and international level. The ECBA are compiling information from defence practitioners on this topic which you can read about in this newsletter below.
The afternoon session gave us the impression that no jurisdiction in Europe exists without the daily practice of plea bargaining in criminal cases. Although officially accepted in some European States it is considered to be a criminal or at least disciplinary offence in others. Emotional discussions gave an interesting idea of how strong it is based within the civil law as well as the Anglo-American tradition of criminal defence. Vânia Costa Ramos described the position in Portugal; Professor Juraj Kolesar explained its application in Slovakia; Tatjana Markelj outlined the Slovenian law and practice in this area; Elmar Kresbach stepped in to the breach to deal with Austria in the absence of Alexandra Pichler and Monty Raphael provided a robust opinion on the balance of power in judicial proceedings in England and Wales.
As usual, the Conference ended with a session dedicated to the developments in criminal law and procedure occurring in the various jurisdictions, and this time we heard the passionate testimony of colleagues from UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Greece, Italy, Slovakia and France about the significant events which took place in their legal systems.
You will be able to find the conference photo and most of the speeches here.
Apart from all legal discussions our special thanks goes to the Slovak Bar Association whose members made it an event worth remembering. The cocktail reception in the Mirbach Palace, the dinner in Matysak Hotel and the city of Bratislava in general gave us a perfect example of the multicultural history of the place and its people. We will hopefully come back some day!
Report by Roland Kier
