Chapter i  Fair Trial Standards: Scope of Application 23 by the corresponding test of whether “the situation of the suspect has been substantially affected”.26 Based on this autonomous approach, the European Court of Human Rights has developed a well-established case law concerning the meaning of a criminal charge, or offence. Its case law sets out three criteria, often referred to as the “Engel criteria” from the leading case of Engel and Others v the Netherlands, requiring consideration of: 1) the domestic classification of the act as criminal or otherwise (See also 1.1.1); 2) the nature of the offence (See also 1.1.2); and 3) the purpose and severity of the penalty (See also 1.1.3).27 Although the Human Rights Committee has used much less precise language in its description of “criminal charges”, it too has referred to three corresponding factors, namely: 1) acts declared to be punishable under domestic criminal law (comparable to Engel criterion (1)), 2) with the potential that this may extend to acts that are criminal in nature (comparable to Engel criterion (2)), 3) accompanied by sanctions that, “regardless of their qualification in domestic law, must be regarded as penal because of their purpose, character or severity” (comparable to Engel criterion (3)).28  One possible difference between the approaches of the European Court and the Human Rights Committee is that the Committee’s description appears to require factors (2) and (3) to be cumulative, whereas the European Court has stated that the second and third criteria are alternative and not necessarily cumulative.29 As stated by the European Court of Human Rights in Jussila v Finland: “It is enough that the offence in question is by its nature to be regarded as criminal or that the offence renders the person liable to a penalty which by its nature and degree of severity belongs in the general criminal sphere… The relative lack of seriousness of the penalty cannot divest an offence of its inherently criminal character… This does not exclude a cumulative approach where separate analysis of each 26 Eckle v Germany [1982] ECHR 4, para 73. 27 Engel and Others v the Netherlands [1976] ECHR 3, paras 80–85. As reaffirmed, for example, in Ezeh and Connors v the United Kingdom [2002] ECHR 595, para 56. 28 UN Human Rights Committee, CCPR General Comment 32 (2007), para 15; and Perterer v Austria, HRC Communication 1015/2001, UN Doc CCPR/C/81/D/1015/2001 (2004), para 9.2. 29 Lutz v Germany [1987] ECHR 20, para 55; Kadubec v Slovakia [1998] ECHR 81, para 51; Ziliberberg v Moldova [2005] ECHR 51, para 31.