Logroño, (EFE).- The EU Justice Ministers have proposed this Friday that all countries have a mandatory hotline for crime victims and have shown themselves willing to end the “gaps” that exist in the current directives to improve support for those.
“There are already in some countries, but we want these telephone lines to be mandatory,” said the EU Justice Commissioner, Didier Reynders, at a press conference, after the meeting that, on the occasion of the Spanish Presidency, the European area ministers held in Logroño.
Reynders has also advanced another proposal from the Council of Justice: that the most vulnerable victims can have free psychological support for as long as necessary.
Chaired by the Spanish head of Justice, Pilar Llop, the meeting has served to share some of the support measures for victims that are underway in the countries and to express the need to articulate others that guarantee their rights.
Llop has insisted on the duty to adequately protect the victims and to give an “effective response from the different institutions, providing them with the means to restore their rights.” In short, throughout the EU they receive “support, information, justice and compensation.”
The minister has specified that it is about guaranteeing the accessibility of the victims to the means they need and “avoiding a second re-victimization”, while ensuring equal treatment that does not discriminate against them according to their origin or crime.
Meanwhile, Commissioner Reynders has shared the need to “protect and empower victims” without discrimination of any kind, and especially the most vulnerable, including minors.
Reynders has gone further and explained that this protection must take into account the specific needs of the victims, which can be established “exactly” with an individual evaluation.
The EU Commissioner for Justice, Didier Reynders, with his mobile phone takes a picture while waiting for the family photo of the European Justice Ministers in Logroño. EFE/Raquel Manzanares
MAKE JUSTICE MORE ACCESSIBLE
With the aim of “putting people at the center of Justice”, as Llop stressed, the meeting also highlighted the need to make Justice more accessible, as a “key element” of the rule of law.
To do this, the ministers want to first eliminate the physical barriers that prevent this access and limit it, especially for people with disabilities.
There is another barrier, the complexity of the legal language, which the EU wants to overcome with formulas that make it simpler and more understandable, without renouncing technical rigor”, as Llop has stressed.
“We all have the right to understand and the right to be understood in Justice,” the minister has settled.
JUDICIAL SUPPORT TO UKRAINE
The meeting also discussed judicial support for Ukraine, with the creation of a joint investigation team and the recent launch of a center to protect victims of Russian “atrocities”, as Llop and Reynders have highlighted.
They have recalled the arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court for the transfer of more than 16,000 minors to Russia or the collection of evidence with the collaboration of Eurojust in order to prosecute war crimes.
The EU wants to continue helping Ukraine by supporting, as before, its Prosecutor’s Office, helping victims to receive adequate support and documenting “the damages, losses and losses suffered” by them.