Special attention must be paid to the European Parliament and Council Directive 2012/29/EU (hereinafter mentioned as ˮthe Directiveˮ) dated 25 October 2012 which established for its Member States several responsibilities for standards on the rights, support and protections of victims of crime. According to the Directive, all European Union (EU) Member States must have fully implemented the directive by November 2015.
The aim of the directive is to promote improved standards on the entitlements, support and protection available to victims of crime across the EU.
Among the rights promoted by the Directive, the Member States should have implemented standards regarding the right to avoid the contact between Victim and Offender. The main goal of such provisions is to assure increased protection of the victim’s psyche. In this respect, the Directive established the necessary conditions to enable avoidance of contact between victims and, where appropriate, their family members and the offender inside the criminal proceedings.
The avoidance of the contact is to be assured by each of the Member States, excepting when the contact is so imposed by the national criminal procedures. One of the main obligations of the Member States was to assure that the buildings in which the law suits are undergoing, namely the national courts be designated with separate waiting rooms for the victims.
The Directive also includes several other recommendations in order to protect the victim: separate entrances, different waiting rooms as well as facilities for the victims of the crimes such as water and food facilities, different scheduling of the victim’s and aggressor’s entry inside not only in the court room, but as well inside the court’s building.
Mainly, what the Directive aimed is that the court rooms be so designed that the victim be not obliged to trespass in front of its aggressor or the aggressor’s supporters, in order to reach to the witnesses area because it might raise the victim’s/witnesses’s feeling of threat or intimidation.
According to the public information, only few European Member States were able to fully and correctly transpose the Directive’s provisions in due time.
Andreea Paducel,
On belhaf of Jinaru, Mihai & Notingher
17.03.2017
