Inside Police Custody 2 1. Introduction 1.1 The nine country study of suspects’ rights at the investigative stage of the criminal process This comparative report is based on empirical research carried out in nine European Union (EU) member states, examining the rights of suspects and accused persons – the right to interpretation and translation, the right to information, and the right of access to a lawyer – as they are applied and experienced in practice at the investigative stage of the criminal process. The research was carried out by partner organisations in the nine countries, co-ordinated by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL). The partner organisations are – The Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights, Austria The Bulgarian Helsinki Committee, Bulgaria The Hungarian Helsinki Committee, Hungary Associazione Antigone, Italy The Human Rights Monitoring Institute, Lithuania The Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, Poland, The Association for the Defence of Human Rights in Romania – the Helsinki Committee, Romania The Peace Institute, Slovenia Rights International, Spain The project was primarily funded by the European Commission under an Action Grant, JUST/2015/Action Grants, reference number 4000008627 ‘Inside Police Custody: Application of EU Procedural Rights’. The action grant funded the research in eight countries. Research in the ninth country, Spain, was funded by the Open Society Justice Initiative. The project was co-ordinated by the ICCL on behalf of the Justicia Network. The primary objective of the project was to measure the practical operation of suspects’ rights at the investigative stage, and to use this evidence to conduct national advocacy directed at improving respect for those rights in practice. It is well established in relation to criminal processes that there is often a significant gap between legal norms and the practical application of those norms. Thus, in addition to establishing and describing the legal norms in the nine countries, the research sought to explore how they operate in practice by conducting observations in police stations and carrying out interviews with key criminal justice personnel. In this way, the project was designed to contribute knowledge concerning the impact of key aspects of the EU procedural rights roadmap, to identify both good and poor systems, procedures and practices, and to make recommendations, both at the national and EU levels, directed at the improvement of procedural rights at the investigative stage in EU Member states. Work on the project was carried out between September 2016 and December 2018, although the periods during which fieldwork was carried out varied depending on a range of factors in each country. However, fieldwork in all countries was conducted after the respective transposition dates of the EU Directives concerning the three sets of rights which were the subject of the study (see further section 1.2). In other words, when the fieldwork was carried out, member states should already have introduced the laws, 8