The impact of victims’ role in criminal proceedings on the exercise of their rights

• In Event: Victims in the Criminal Justice System: Participation, Rights, and Challenges

Abstract

The Directive 2012/29/EU establishing minimum standards on the rights, support and protection of victims of crime indicates that victims’ role in the criminal justice system remains an issue for the Member State to decide. Therefore, the rights provided by the Directive are to be transposed and exercised considering the victims’ role in criminal proceedings, as provided by each Member State.
This contribution focuses on Romania. The strong nation-state and the state-centered model of criminal justice, as foundational approaches to criminal justice, influenced the victims’ role in criminal proceedings, the exercise of their participatory rights, and the understanding of victims as vulnerable individuals.
Starting with the communist period, the law constantly minimised the role of the victims in criminal proceedings. Currently, in Romania, the victims lack party status and do not have a prosecutorial role. The criminal justice system, appreciated as ‛a policy-implementing process of hierarchical officialdom’, gives little space for victims to exercise their rights and minimise their position as vulnerable individuals. As a result, the practical implementation of participatory rights is relatively low, and the transposition of protection measures has been realised only under an infringement procedure. The empirical data on the right to information, the right to access legal aid, and protection measures prove the low enforcement of victims’ rights and protection measures.
The contribution argues that even if the victims’ role in criminal proceedings is left to the Member States’ autonomy, a minimum harmonisation regarding the prosecutorial role under the right to review the prosecutors’ decision to dismiss a case might be worth considering.

Author

• Diana Maria Ionescu, Babeș Bolyai University Cluj Napoca