The venue of the fall conference 2015 was the impressive building of European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. With Luxembourg fulfilling the Presidency of the EU for this semester, the location could not have been chosen any better.
After a brief welcome speech by the Dean of the Luxemburg Bar Association, Minister of Justice of Luxembourg Félix Braz gave an overview of the state of play in a number of legislative dossiers in the area of criminal law which are now under consideration by the European legislature in the trilogue stage. The Minister stressed the ambition of the Luxembourg presidency to push these projects forward. ECBA chairman Holger Matt replied to the speech of the Minister, stressing that bad compromises on fundamental rights are worse than no EU compromise at all on these issues.
The following speaker was judge Egidijus Bieliūnas of the Court of Justice. This speaker went into the technicalities of the Court's approach of the qualification of offences, in the context of the Court's ne bis in idem jurisprudence.
Advocate General Eleanor Sharpston of the Court of Justice then talked about opinion 2/13 of 18 December 2014 of the Court, in which the Court ruled that the draft accession agreement to the European Convention on Human Rights was not compatible with EU law. Mrs. Sharpston commented on the Court's focus on mutual trust between Member States as an instrument in creating the Area of freedom, security & justice, and contrasted the Court's position with the focus of the ECtHR on the protection of individual fundamental rights. These positions are not very compatible.
The panel discussion that followed considered the right to access to the case file in criminal proceedings under Directive 2012/13/EU. Speakers from different jurisdictions explained the implementation of this directive in their respective systems.
After a well-organised and very agreeable lunch, the floor was given to Pascale Millim and Laurent Thyes, both civil servants in the Luxemburg government, and together in charge of the Council's dossiers on Children's Rights, Legal Aid and the European Prosecutor's Office (Eppo). They described the discussions between the Parliament, the Council and the Commission, and gave pointers as to where the discussions would lead to compromises. Representatives of the ECBA then briefly put forward the ECBA's position on these subjects.
In the following session, progress reports of ECBA working groups and new ECBA projects were presented. These ranged from joint training efforts via more political projects such as an ECBA response to the threat that the UK might leave the ECHR to a more substantively legal new effort on anti-corruption training under the flag of the ECBA.
The panel discussion that followed focused on Mutual Legal Assistance and the abuse thereof. Practitioners from Italy, Luxemburg, France, Portugal and Belgium highlighted the difficulties in defending against abuses.
The conference concluded with the traditional national reports, this time from Belgium, Norway and the Czech Republic, with a guest appearance by Alex Tinsley of Fair Trials International.
by Dian Brouwer
