&37*HQHUDO5HSRUW 16. As regards the CPT’s contacts with institutions of the European Union, representatives of the Committee held detailed discussions with FRONTEX officials in Warsaw on 24 and 25 February 2011. Areas in which the CPT and FRONTEX might cooperate in the future were explored, including as regards the monitoring of joint return operations coordinated by FRONTEX. As already indicated (see paragraph 11), the CPT has recently set up an ad hoc working group on this subject. Further, following a request from the European External Action Service, a member of the CPT took part in an exploratory mission to Uzbekistan in June 2011, in order to examine the best way of responding to a request for assistance in the area of torture prevention that the EU had received from that country. 17. CPT representatives have also continued to take part in experts’ meetings organised by the EU Commission for the implementation of the “roadmap” on procedural rights and detention-related matters adopted by the EU Council in November 2009. The meetings concerned in particular the envisaged “Green Paper” (i.e. consultative document) on detention issues in the EU and draft legislation on the right of access to a lawyer in criminal proceedings. The Green Paper was published on 14 June 2011 and the CPT welcomes the fact that in relation to the monitoring of detention conditions in the EU, the accent is placed on promoting synergy between the bodies that exist already at national and international level rather than on creating new mechanisms. Reference should be made here to the invitation addressed by the Justice Ministers at their November 2010 Conference in Istanbul to the competent bodies of the EU, that they “take due account of the Council of Europe’s experience in the area of setting standards in the prison field and with mechanisms for monitoring their implementation, in order to ensure coherence and avoid duplication”. The CPT believes that provided that the Council of Europe and the EU work in harmony, the two organisations are together capable of having a major impact on the treatment of prisoners throughout Europe. On 8 June 2011 the EU Commission adopted a proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on the right of access to a lawyer in criminal proceedings and on the right to communicate upon arrest. The CPT welcomes this proposal which, if enacted in the form put forward by the Commission, would consolidate these two fundamental safeguards long advocated by the Committee4. 4. On the assumption that the issue of legal aid will in due course be dealt with through a separate proposal.