ABSTRACT
Minors are universally accepted to be vulnerable and the European Union is increasingly paying attention to this particular form of vulnerability in its policy and legislation. This is evident in the EU Roadmap for strengthening procedural rights of suspected or accused persons in criminal proceedings. However, there are doubts as to whether the instruments adopted on the basis of the EU roadmap have reached their full potential. This chapter assesses the actual impact on juvenile suspects and defendants of the Procedural Rights Directives in general, and of Directive 2016/800 on procedural safeguards for children suspected or accused in criminal proceedings (‘Children Directive’) in particular. The chapter more specifically carries out a legal analysis of the content and national implementation of the Procedural Rights Directives. On the one hand, it examines which additional guarantees the Children Directive provides for juvenile suspects and defendants compared to the rights enshrined in the five other Procedural Rights Directives. On the other hand, the chapter examines the transposition of those rights into national law, since directives are not directly applicable in EU member states. The member states selected for review are Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands, based on the diverse ways in which they respond to offences committed by minors. The chapter concludes with some comparative remarks and a summary of the aspects in which the Procedural Rights Directives bring added value or, on the contrary, have shortcomings.
