Green Paper – Strengthening mutual trust in the European judicial area – A Green Paper on the application of EU criminal justice legislation in the field of detention

The Commission wishes to explore the extent to which detention issues impact on mutual trust, and consequently on mutual recognition and judicial cooperation generally within the European Union.

Whilst detention conditions and prison management are the responsibility of Member States, the Commission is interested in this issue because of the central importance of the principle of mutual recognition of judicial decisions for the area of freedom, security and justice.

For mutual recognition to operate effectively there must be a common basis of trust between judicial authorities. Member States need to have better knowledge of each other's criminal justice systems.

In its Resolution on a Roadmap for strengthening procedural rights of suspected persons in criminal proceedings, the Council states that "The time that a person can spend in detention before being tried in court and during the court proceedings varies a lot between the Member States. Excessively long periods of pre-trial detention are detrimental for the individual, can prejudice the judicial cooperation between the Member States and do not represent the values for which the European Union stands".

The Council invited the Commission to present a Green Paper on pre-trial detention. This Paper – which is part of the procedural rights package – is the Commission's response to the Council's request.

• Primary Source

EUR-Lex: COM(2011)327: Follow the progress of this document through the decision-making procedure http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/HIS/?uri=COM:2011:327:FIN

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