[COLPI-SLClinics] PILI: CEE Countries Need to Improve Legal Aid

[***Originally posted on the Public-Interest-Law-Network e-mail list, Mod.***]

PILI: Central and Eastern European Countries Need to Improve Legal Aid

On December 5 to 7, 2002 Columbia Universitys Public Interest Law
Initiative (PILI) and its partners in the project on Promoting Access to
Justice in Central and Eastern Europe convene in Budapest the European
Forum on Access to Justice, a regional conference for representatives of
the ministry of justices, the judiciary and civil society from the EU
accession countries from Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans,
Russia, the Caucasian region and representative of international
institutions such as the European Union, the Council of Europe and the
World Bank.

The main goal of the European Forum on Access to Justice is to support
the efforts of the 10 EU accession countries from Central and Eastern
Europe to reform their systems for provision of legal aid. The need for
improvements in this field has been highlighted by the European
Commission in its Regular Reports on the Candidate Countries Progress
towards Accession for 2002 with respect to Bulgaria, the Czech Republic,
Hungary, Latvia, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia.

European countries have clear obligations to provide legal aid in
criminal cases when the interests of justice so require and in civil
cases when access to a court is at stake, said Edwin Rekosh, the
Executive Director of Columbia Universitys Public Interest Law
Initiative. The transformation of the legal systems in the countries of
Central and Eastern Europe cannot be completed without reforming legal
aid to ensure that these international standards are met -- both in
domestic legislation and in practice.

In preparation for the Forum, PILI released ten country reports
evaluating the laws and practices relating to access to justice in the
ten EU accession countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The reports
reveal that the countries in the region still do not provide adequate
guarantees to the right to legal aid in criminal and in civil cases, and
highlighted the following problems:

-  Availability of legal aid in criminal cases is limited and adequate
procedural guarantees exist only in a narrow category of cases when
defense is mandatory, thus a number of defendants facing imprisonment in
fact are convicted without a lawyer.  Empirical surveys conducted in
Bulgaria in the framework of the project Promoting Access to Justice in
Central and Eastern Europe for example reveal that defense counsel was
present only in 53.5% of the cases before the first instance.

-  The lack of clear means tests creates serious problems for the
application of the right to legal aid in practice. In Poland, for
example, defendants have to adequately demonstrate that they are not
in a position to bear the costs of the proceedings. The laws contain no
further provisions as to the evidence that must be submitted or the
minimum income that must be established and practically leave the right
of the individual to the discretion of the proceeding authorities.

-  In civil cases the countries under review provide no sufficient
guarantees to the right of access to court from the outset of the
proceedings. The right to legal aid usually attaches after the filing of
the action and no legal aid is provided for preparation and filing of
the initial actions.

-  The quality of legal aid services is often unsatisfactory.  There are
no mechanisms in place to secure better quality of legal aid. Empirical
surveys reveal that high percent of dissatisfaction with the court
appointed lawyers.

-  There is no adequate planning and management of the legal aid
system.  There is no separate budget line for legal aid in the courts
budgets or in the budgets of the ministries of justice.   Currently
different managerial functions are divided among the Ministry of
Justice, Bar Associations and the courts. Communication between
different agencies is not always well organized, which can affect the
rights of the people depending on legal aid services.

The full text of the access to justice country reports, including a
comparative report is available at:
<http://www.pili.org/library/access/country_reports.html>




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