Non-governmental Organizations Address Viviane Reding on Pre-trial Detention Regulation in EU

September 11, 2013

Over 20 non-governmental organizations, including the Human Rights Monitoring Institute, addressed Vice-President of the European Commission Viviane Reding yesterday encouraging the European Commission to continue working on the establishment of minimum standards for the use of pre-trial detention in EU.

Addressing NGOs emphasized the recognition of the European Commission, Council and Parliament that ”excessively long periods of pre-trial detention are detrimental to the individual, can prejudice cooperation between the Member States, and do not represent the values for which the European Union stands”.* Therefore European Commission is encouraged to continue working in this area  and develop a timeframe for tabling a legislative proposal setting common minimum standards for the use of pre-trial detention in the EU.

Addressing organizations urged the Commission to:

1) take measures that statistical data on the use of pre-trial detention and its alternatives in EU member states would be collected and published by European statistics programme;
2) take further EU action to establish minimum and enforceable EU standards on pre-trial detention if, as the addressing organizations expect, the collected statistical data shows this to be necessary.

Complete text of reference can be found here.

* A Green Paper on the application of EU criminal justice legislation in the field of detention, COM(2011) 327