Developing Victim's Rights within the European Union: Past, Present and Future

Abstract

The position of victims of crime has shown vast improvements since the 1970's. Thirty years ago it was correct to assert that the victim was the forgotten party of the criminal justice process, while this would be at odds with the actual situation of victims today. Policy at the level of the European Union is laid down in the Council Directive 2004/80/EC relating to compensation to crime victims and the Framework Decision on the standing of victims in criminal proceedings of the 15th of March 2001. The Framework Decision may be viewed as a milestone in the development of victims’ rights, being the first so-called ‘hard law’ instrument covering a wide range of victims’ rights available at the international level.The development of victims’ rights within the European Union may be further enhanced by the adoption of the Treaty of Lisbon and the five-year plan for justice and home affairs within the EU, the 2009 Stockholm Programme. The coming period will see the redrafting of the Framework Decision into a Directive on victims of crime, which will offer the European Commission more opportunities to see to the implementation of measures designed to promote the well-being of victims in the criminal justice system. The draft version of this Directive was put forward by the European Commission in May 2011, with adoption foreseen in late 2012. So far, so good. However, as we shall set out in the first section of this paper, the transposal of Framework decision articles in domestic legislation and the enforcement of victims’ rights paints a considerably less encouraging picture. It might be an overstatement to call the implementation of the Framework Decision a failure, but, the impact has not been qualitatively different from previous soft-law instruments. Subsequently we will consider the potential impact of the Stockholm Programme and the Treaty of Lisbon. Will the redrafting of the Framework Decision into a Directive automatically lead to better protection or is this a more complicated matter? In what way will characteristics of the EU (post-Lisbon) and differences in its member states impact the implementation and enforcement of victims’ rights? This will lead us to reflect on the nature of victims’ rights, as well as policy making within the European Union.