when i became commissioner i saw that a great deal had been done in the past on questions of security and very little had been done on questions of rights
that is why having the tools of the lisbon treaty at my disposal and also having the stockholm strategy where many points on how we have to advance have been put into place we decided to act and we acted very swiftly
first of all let me thank the parliament for the excellent work which has been done on the procedural rights
we have already come to an agreement on the right of a person before the court to interpretation and translation in criminal proceedings
we are making good progress on the directive on the right to information in criminal proceedings the famous letter of rights
if we want to become the continent of rights we will have to have the procedural rights established little by little
those come at a price but they are indispensable to safeguarding the rights of the defence for european citizens and also to making mutual recognition function properly
before we make any proposal we always make a thorough impact assessment of the financial consequences of the eu legislation for member states
only then do we submit legislative proposals
this exercise was of course based on the figures provided by the administration of the member states
these figures reveal that the additional costs to be borne by member states should not be too great
regarding the right to interpretation and translation the directive simply reiterates an existing obligation of the member states already in the convention on human rights of the council of europe so it is not asking for something extraordinary
it is just asking for something very basic
the member states and there are many who already comply with the strasbourg court obligations are unlikely to have to incur any expenses in addition to what they already spend on this
regarding the right to information the biggest share of expenditure will be in the initial one-off cost of drawing up a letter of rights
here the commission has already submitted a model as an annex to the directive in all the eu languages
member states just have to take this model and copy it so the cost to them will not be very great
the commission does not have a budget containing any appropriation which would allow the institution to provide financial assistance to member states to meet those expenses
if member states make a calculation taking in the risk of a miscarriage of justice the legal remedies and the retrials the loss of reputation of a justice system as a whole and sometimes the damages awarded by the strasbourg court or by domestic courts then it is much more expensive not to have these basic rights financed by a responsible state
