D. PREPARATORY WORK FOR USING THE DIRECTIVE Before considering the practical situations in which you might want to rely on the Directive, it is advisable for you to do some background work to ensure you have the right legal and other materials in mind when approaching questions under the Directive. 1. Examine national law and practice in light of the Directive The aspects of criminal procedure relevant to this Directive may be second nature to you. However, it is worth taking a step back and examining the legislative and practical picture again in light of the Directive. There may have been new amendments to national legislation and/or policy made recently to implement the Directive, and it will be helpful to look at the relevant provisions from the perspective of the Directive’s requirements as this will help you form an initial view as to where issues of compliance may arise. Use any systems available in your national system for identifying the relevant provisions. From the EU perspective, there is a systematic (but imperfect) way to identify the relevant legislation through the ‘Eur-Lex’ database which stores or links to all EU legislation and case-law, and increasingly national law and case-law too. Here is a brief indication of how to use this system to find legislation considered by the government of your Member State to ensure compliance with the Directive:  Identify the relevant national legislation  Go to http://eur-lex.europa.eu and choose your language;  In the section ‘search by document reference’ (or the equivalent in your language) type ‘2012’ in the ‘Year’ field and ‘13’ in the ‘Number’ field, and click the ‘Directive’ box (searching for Directive 2012/13/EU);  This will return a link with the full title of the Directive. Click on this;  In the display, you will see the text of the directive and a table with links to several language versions. Above this, there are tabs, one of which is called ‘Linked documents’ (or the equivalent in your language). Click on this;  Further down the page you will see an option saying ‘Display the national implementing measures: NIM’, a link to the implementing laws of each country. Click on this;  Scroll through the list of results until you see the name of your Member State appear as the ‘author’, with the title of the legislation in question. Bear in mind though that you may need to do further research through local systems, as this system may not capture everything that is relevant. We suggest that you review your national legislation, bearing in mind your understanding of how it operates in practice, to establish how the Directive is being applied on the ground in your jurisdiction. The key questions, we would suggest, are these:  Examine national law and procedure in light of the Directive Notification of rights  How are rights notified to persons suspected or accused?  Is the same process used for arrested and not arrested persons? 12