The EU-funded project Effective defence rights in the EU and access to justice: investigating and promoting best practice was funded by the Criminal Justice Programme in 2007.
Four researchers set out to study and compare access to effective criminal defence in Europe: Professor Ed Cape of the University of the West of England (UK), Professor Taru Spronken of Maastricht University (Netherlands), Roger Smith of JUSTICE (UK), and Zaza Namoradze of Open Society Justice Initiative (Hungary).
Nine specific European jurisdictions were studied (according to one of the three major legal traditions in Europe: inquisitorial, adversarial and post-state socialist): Belgium, England and Wales, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland and Turkey.
