3. The Directives do not create new systems EU law tends to leave procedures to the Member States to organise, under a principle known as ‘national procedural autonomy’. Traditionally, EU law will only impose very basic requirements of access to remedies, e.g. requiring legal aid provision, excluding time limits which limit access to the courts etc. under the doctrine of ‘effectiveness’. Whilst the Directives actually regulate procedure, and so go further than this, they impose only minimum standards and the legal basis, Article 82(2)(b), TFEU specifies that they should ‘take into account the differences between the legal traditions’ of the Member States’ justice systems. In other words, there is no ‘harmonization’ and the fundamental structures of justice systems are not altered. Thus, the Directives cannot be used to create a system of exclusion of evidence where there is none. 4. Use existing avenues of recourse to ensure the effect of the Directives However, national law should already provide a mechanism for enforcement of procedural rights (at least those protected by the national code), and the idea is to use these to achieve the objectives of the Directives. For instance:  In Latvia, Article 130 of the criminal procedure code requires the trial court, when judging on the merits, to have no regard to evidence obtained in violation of fundamental principles of criminal law. The court can have limited regard to evidence obtained through lesser violations, taking into account any doubts about its reliability arising from the breach.  In France, the court judging on the merits of a simple case, seised of an application in limine litis, can declare a procedural act (e.g. a police custody) ‘void’ if the procedural code or even ECHR principles are infringed, such that this act can no longer form the basis for its decision. The same power arises in respect of investigative acts taken by an investigative judge. Such systems provide a mechanism linking violations of defence rights to remedial action taken by criminal courts. These mechanisms can be harnessed in order to give effect to the relevant directive. So, to use the above examples, a violation of the provisions of the Directive at the pre-trial stage should be considered akin to a violation of the ECHR or a ‘fundamental principle of criminal law’ and the prescribed remedy should be applied. Legally, the key question is how to achieve this. These are our assumptions in the Toolkits:  The principle of direct effect enables you to invoke the specific rights conferred by the Directives and you can rely on the substantive right conferred by the Directive in national courts.  This right can be invoked when the national procedural code has failed properly to implement the Directive, or directly contradicts it. So if, for instance, national law excludes the lawyer from police questioning, where the Directive clearly requires this, the accused will be able to rely directly upon the Access to a Lawyer Directive (after its implementation deadline) and the national rule has to be set aside.  Similarly, you have a right to an effective remedy as guaranteed by Article 47 of the Charter which you can rely upon to claim a remedy for the violation of the rights in the Directives, together with any specific remedial obligations in the Directives themselves. 10