Facing new and multiple challenges such as immigration, cross border crime, terrorism, the movement of people and goods, etc., the European Union has come to realize the increased importance of the need for judicial cooperation and mutual recognition between Member States in order to guarantee security and justice in the EU.
However, at the same time there is a deep concern that, with regard to these challenges, the citizens’ freedom and fundamental rights must be safeguarded.
This project (AGIS project JLS/2006/AGIS/052) must be seen as part of a concerted effort to establish guarantees and mechanisms for compliance with procedural safeguards in criminal proceedings in all Member States of the European Union.
This AGIS project focuses particularly on one such fundamental procedural safeguard, the right to access to justice across languages and culture or, in other words, the right to a free interpreter and the translation of all relevant documents in criminal proceedings.
In order to remedy these existing discrepancies and to arrive at minimum guaranteed standards in all Member States, one needs, first of all, more detailed and objective information on the existing provisions, i.e. a status quaestionis on the provision of legal interpreting and translation in the EU.
This will in turn allow for considered reflection and action both on EU and on Member State level.
The core sections of this book provide an analysis of the responses from the Member States on the basis of indicators that are relevant to assess the provision of legal interpreting and translation. These indicators allow the drawing up of a composite country profile of each Member State for interpreting as well as translation. A more detailed, thorough analysis of one Member State has been included by way of example to show the full potential of the responses.
These country profiles are weighed and ranked on a number of essential performance indicators and subsequently on five quality indicators derived from the EU Green Paper on Procedural Rights. This allows for an overall ranking of all Member States on a European scale and shows in composite maps how the Member States are performing with regard to this particular procedural safeguard.
