Following national transposition of procedural rights’ Directives, various eu and domestic authorities would need to interpret their provisions, including those concerning the right to custodial legal assistance. To inform this interpretation, account must be taken of the relevant ECtHR case law. However, many of the Directives’ provisions are so unclear, and the ECtHR approach is so inconsistent, that to achieve a coherent interpretation, it appears necessary to first identify the principles behind this right. This article examines these principles, in the form of rationales, from the theoretical, jurisprudential, and eu law perspectives. It concludes that the right should be conceived as grounded in a range of rationales, notwithstanding an alternative view that it serves (only) to protect the privilege against self-incrimination. The article fleshes out the consequences of this conclusion for interpreting some of the relevant Directives’ provisions, and for criminal defence practice.

The shifting focus of criminal proceedings from the trial to the pre-trial stages leads to a changing role of criminal defence practitioners across Europe. European criminal defence lawyers are now expected to enter the proceedings earlier and exercise "active" and "participatory" defence as early as the investigative stage. Criminal lawyers, trained in the traditional trial-centred paradigm, are ill-prepared for this role, which results in an important skills gap. Legal representation at the investigative stage presents unique challenges, such as shortage of information, time pressures and the closed nature of pre-trial proceedings. It requires lawyers to operate in a more complex communication environment, than the one to which they have been accustomed. This article sets out the main elements of a professional training programme aiming to fill in the emerging skills gap. The training programme (SUPRALAT) was successfully implemented in Belgium, Hungary, Ireland and the Netherlands, and is being expanded further. The training focuses on effective communication skills, experiential learning and the development of reflective skills. It includes elements of interprofessional training and encourages the development of "communities of practice".

This article sheds comparative and contextual light on European and international human rights debates around the privilege against self-incrimination and the right to silence. It does so through an examination of adverse inferences from criminal suspect’s silence in three European jurisdictions with differing procedural traditions: Ireland, Italy and the Netherlands. The article highlights the manner in which adverse inferences have come to be drawn at trial in the three jurisdictions, despite the existence of both European and domestic legal protections for the right to silence. It also explores differing approaches to the practical operation of inference-drawing procedures, including threshold requirements, varying evidential uses of silence and procedural safeguards. The authors argue that human rights’ standard-setting institutions ought to provide clarity on the conditions under which adverse inferences may be tolerated, including the purpose(s) for which inferences may be used, and the necessary surrounding safeguards.

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