La proposition de directive 275/2011: la protection des victimes de la criminalité à la lumière de la reconnaissance mutuelle - Version amendée après l’adoption de la directive 2012/29/UE

The centrality of the principle of mutual recognition of judicial decisions and of the premise on which it is based, namely the mutual trust between member States, becomes the fulcrum at the heart of the system of cooperation, towards which the harmonisation of legislation assumes a function which is, in a way, instrumental. In this way, the development of the norms based on mutual recognition has been accompanied by the awareness of the necessity to increment the level of harmonisation of national laws. 4 As far as the rights and the protection of the victims of criminality are concerned, the aim of harmonisation of the proposition of directive 275/2011 of the Commission finds its political justification in the Stockholm programme and its juridical basis in the article 82.2 c) TFEU. The abovementioned proposition follows the change of perspective made by the framework decision 220/2001 in comparison to the structure of the majority of national systems focused on the accused and to the traditional approach of the other instruments of protection of human rights focused on the protection of victims’ rights. The latter are centred on the rights and the guaranties of the accused of a crime, detained or condemned; on the contrary, the Commission proposes a codification of specific victims’ rights that is nothing but an evolution of fundamental rights already recognised internationally, namely the right to human dignity, to the integrity of the person, to liberty and security. In this field, the other founding aspect of the mutual recognition and of the necessity to build a common space of liberty, security and justice can be identified as the mutual solidarity between member States in fighting organised and transnational criminality. But, why is the regulation by law of victims’ rights necessary at European level? How can the protection of the victims be instrumental to the creation of a climate of mutual trust between member States and to the improvement of citizens’ trust in the European judicial authorities? It is a question of understanding if, how and to what extent the proposition of directive makes the mutual trust easier. Consequently, the present work assesses the ability of the proposition of the directive to attain the above-mentioned mutual trust, not only by exploring the differences in with regard to the regulation provided by the framework decision of 2001 but also by examining the improvements made, as well as the changes that seem to be required in order to attain the fixed objectives.