Right to a lawyer and to legal aid in criminal proceedings in five European jurisdictions: comparative report

This comparative report on the right to a lawyer and to legal aid in criminal proceedings in Bulgaria, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland and Slovenia was prepared in the framework of the project “Strengthening procedural rights in criminal proceedings: effective implementation of the right to a lawyer/legal aid under the Stockholm Programme”. The project is co-financed by the DG Justice and Consumers of the European Commission. Five non-governmental organizations from those countries, the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee, the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights in Poland, the Lithuanian Human Rights Monitoring Institute and the Slovenian Mirovni Institute undertook to implement a variety of activities aiming at monitoring the implementation of the EU law related to the right to access to a lawyer and to legal aid in criminal proceedings; increasing the knowledge of the relevant EU standards among the stakeholders and strengthening of their capacity to implement them; facilitating communication and coordination between different legal practitioners and researchers in the process of implementation; identifying and promoting good practices.