Rights of the accused person in criminal proceedings and cross-border cooperation

Abstract

The modern trends of life and work "without borders" result in an increase in cross-border crime, which also affects the increase in the number of criminal proceedings in which there is a need for the cooperation of competent authorities from several countries. In these cases, the high standard of rights of accused persons reached in Europe imposes the need for harmonization of regulations, primarily those related to the most important rights of the suspect or accused person, such as the right to information and the right to interpretation and translation. In the European Union, after the adoption of the Resolution on the road map for strengthening the procedural rights of accused persons in criminal proceedings (adopted by the Council in 2009) and since then several other directives and decisions relevant to this issue, a lot of time has passed, and various procedural solutions in states still exist, which is why it is necessary to further develop and harmonize these rules so as not to call into question the basic principles of international legal assistance in criminal matters, primarily the principle of mutual trust and the principle of mutual recognition of decisions. A significant step in the further development of cross-border cooperation in criminal matters at the level of the European Union is the proposal of the Regulation of the European Parliament and the Council on the transfer of criminal proceedings, from 2023, in relation to which the need for a firm and explicit establishment of the standard of the defendant's rights has already been highlighted by the professional public. Solutions that are not fully harmonized with the European Union regulations related to the rights of the accused person, which are also important for cross-border cooperation. In the paper, the authors deal with the analysis of the rights of accused persons in the relevant directives of the European Union and the rights given to them in the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Republic of Serbia, primarily the right to information and the right to interpretation and translation.

Keywords

• suspect
• defendant
• defense attorney
• criminal proceedings
• crossborder cooperation