is recorded that the lawyers had been explicitly invoking the Access to a Lawyer Directive, well over two years before its implementation date. The Madrid Bar politely dismissed this complaint, pointing out that it was not for the police to determine what effects the Directive might have.17 This shows the conduct of police station proceedings can be cast in a new light, and possibly influenced for the better, just by making the Directive part of the conversation. 2. The remedial principle Ultimately though, the Directives establish rights and the way these are enforced is by invoking the Directive in court when those rights are not respected. This may, in particular, be because national law has not correctly implemented the Directive and so, when applied to your case, produces a violation of EU law. In this situation, you need to claim a remedy. a. The access to a lawyer model The ‘model’ we will take as a reference point is that established by the ECtHR in its Salduz v. Turkey 18 judgment of 2008: ‘Article 6 § 1 requires that, as a rule, access to a lawyer should be provided as from the first interrogation of a suspect by the police (…) The rights of the defence will in principle be irretrievably prejudiced when incriminating statements made during police interrogation without access to a lawyer are used for a conviction.’19 The ECtHR is not, of course, capable of specifying to Contracting States how they should organise their justice systems. But it arises fairly clearly from this provision that if the right to a lawyer at the pre-trial stage is infringed, remedial action must be taken by the courts to ensure that the resulting evidence is not ‘used for a conviction’ (e.g. through exclusion of evidence). The strength of this indication is what enabled the EU Member States to agree the clearest provision on remedies of any of the Directive: Article 12(2) of the Access to a Lawyer Directive, which includes a specific ‘remedies’ provision apparently designed to secure compliance with the Salduz principle: ‘Without prejudice to national rules and systems on the admissibility of evidence, Member States shall ensure that, in criminal proceedings, in the assessment of statements made by suspects or accused persons or of evidence obtained in breach of their right to a lawyer (…) the rights of the defence and the fairness of the proceedings are respected.’ This provision displays the ‘constructive ambiguity’ that characterises the Roadmap – in other words, Member States could not agree and so used broad wording, leaving the CJEU to find the right interpretation when concrete cases arise. But it does express the basic idea that a violation of the right guaranteed by the Directive should meet a response from the competent courts, so as to guarantee that the earlier breach does not contaminate the fairness of the proceedings as a whole. 17 The response is available here: http://web.icam.es/bucket/ACUERDO%20I_P_%20277-14%281%29.pdf. Case of Salduz v. Turkey, App. no. 36391/02 (Judgment of 27 November 2008). 19 Paragraph 55. 18 8