Recommendations Legal aid and remuneration: The national working group115 in its action plan and in further roundtable events,116 presented the following recommendations on how to tackle the challenges identified above. • The Directives and their implementation: Access to main documents: • New laws are needed that fully transpose the Directives, together with monitoring their practical implementation, in particular at a local level, in order to safeguard the rights of the arrested person. • • A better cooperation between lawyers’ associations and tribunals was identified as necessary in order to increase awareness-raising actions on procedural rights and on the benefits of the Directives. Regarding the delivery of the Letter of Rights (actual and in written form), the introduction of more guarantees, particularly judicial remedies in cases of violation, was recommended. • Similarly, more guarantees and judicial remedies should be established in cases of violation regarding a suspect’s/an accused person’s actual knowledge and comprehension of the right to silence. • • The modalities of testing a suspect’s knowledge and comprehension of the Italian language should be reviewed. • Judicial remedies to challenge a negative decision regarding the possibility to benefit from translation or interpretation services and a review of judicial remedies regarding the translation of documents should be introduced. Poor quality of translation and interpretation: • In order to monitor the quality of interpretation services, a mandatory video recording of the interpretation during the proceedings should be established and judicial remedies should be introduced to make it possible to assess the work of the interpreter. • In addition, a specific, mandatory register must be set up, requiring translators and interpreters to have specific knowledge in the legal field. • For the suspect/accused, a rule on the recusal (substitution request) of the interpreter should be introduced. • Regarding the poor quality of interpretation services, it was proposed to set up a register which was considered especially useful for rare languages or dialects. For big tribunals, it was suggested that an office within the tribunal be set up with specialized interpreters. On the right to information, it was noted that simply handing the Letter of Rights was not sufficient to guarantee that the arrested person understood his/her rights but would require oral explanation. The lack of confidentiality of communication: • More guarantees of the confidentiality of lawyer/client communications, such as adequate facilities for consultations, are necessary. The lack of time to consult with a client: • The need for the establishment of a minimum timing of the consultation between the suspected/accused person and their lawyer before the validation hearing or the fasttrack trial was highlighted. Even if there is no time limitation to the consultation between the lawyer and the client, it could be useful to set a minimum time so that lawyers don’t feel pressured by the environmental circumstances to speed up the necessary consultation. The national action plan suggests the inclusion of some documents of the prosecutor’s file in the notice of the hearing to the lawyer, at a minimum the relevant procedural documents, such as the provisional charge of the client. The right to translation and interpretation: Information about rights: • The rules concerning legal aid and a severe delay in payments to lawyers by the Italian state should be adopted. 115 The working group was composed of nine lawyers. It met on 25 July 2018 via videoconference. 116 Roundtable events were held on 22 May 2019 in Bari, on 30 May in Bologna and on 6 June in Rome. Representatives from different legal professions contributed to the discussions, including defence lawyers, judges, public prosecutors, academics and ombudspersons for people deprived of personal liberty. 40