{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.02569960022844089, 'fraction_numerical': 0.01599086236436322, 'mean_word_length': 4.820598006644518, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
The European Court of Human Rights on the ‘Access to a Lawyer’ Directive 2013/48/EU: the Quest for a Coherent Application of the Right to a Legal Assistance in Europe?

The right to a custodial legal assistance has always been considered a key procedural guarantee in criminal proceedings, which allowed for the effective realisation of other ‘due process’ rights of the suspected or accused person. The ‘Access to a lawyer’ Directive 2013/48/EU is one of the outcomes of the massive legal reform which followed the famous Salduz ruling (2008), where the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) prominently stated that the accused shall be provided with assistance of counsel since the initial stages of police interrogation. At the same time, scholars have not paid attention to the possible effects of Directive 2013/48/EU on the practice of the Strasbourg Court. The aim of this paper is to shed light on the way the ‘Access to a lawyer’ Directive is perceived by the ECtHR, given the incredible uncertainty surrounding this issue. The author argues that - paradoxically - the Directive text seems to have had significant impact on the Ibrahim, Simeonovi, Beuze lines of reasoning, framing possible derogations from maximum guarantees of access to a lawyer stemming from the earlier Salduz judgement. Even though the ECtHR tends to avoid direct analysis of the Directive 2013/48/EU provisions, it seems to have accepted the lowest level of protection provided by this EU Law act. This could be rather problematic for the non-EU Convention signatories’ criminal justice systems, being encouraged to follow the standard of procedural guarantees stemming from the EU legal order - which these states preferred not to join (or were not allowed to join).