conducted, this time with an authorised interpreter assisting by telephone, in which the statement was repeated. At subsequent interviews and at court she said she did not know what the parcels contained. The appeal court relied on this inconsistency to find she was not credible. In so doing, it noted that the French-speaking interviewer had asked several control questions, and that there was simply no possibility that she could have misunderstood the initial statement. The ECtHR said: 23. (...) the obligation of the competent authorities is not limited to the appointment of an interpreter but, if they are put on notice in the particular circumstances, may also extend to a degree of subsequent control over the adequacy of the interpretation provided. (...) 29. The Court also finds that the Appeal Court did exercise a sufficient degree of control of the adequacy of AS’s interpretation skills. 30. Furthermore, the Court observes that the applicant’s disputed statement “that the packages contained a product to wash money” was far from the only evidence in the criminal proceedings against her and that there is nothing to indicate that it was decisive to the outcome of the case. 31. In these circumstances, the Court considers that the applicant received sufficient linguistic assistance during the first interview with the Swedish Customs. 32 This is the only ECtHR decision explicitly to suggest that ‘exercising control of the adequacy of interpretation’, as mentioned in Hacioglu v. Romania (cited above) and Recital 24 to the Directive, means that a court deciding on the substance of the case, if put on notice as to the quality of interpretation delivered at the pre-trial stage, must have regard – retroactively – to the adequacy of that interpretation (paragraph 29, Diallo) when assessing the evidence. The specific case was dismissed as inadmissible, but this legal reasoning is noteworthy. iv. Establishing a retroactive control obligation under the Directive As mentioned in the ‘Using EU Law in Practice’ Toolkit, the fact that the Directive is silent on the issue of remedies is not the end of the analysis. Interpretation at the police station is governed by EU law, so this issue is within the scope of EU law, which entails the applicability of fundamental rights guaranteed by the Charter. These include defence rights protected by Article 48 of the Charter, based on Article 6(3) ECHR and should be interpreted accordingly. The tentative, but clear indication in the ECtHR case-law is that control must be exercised retroactively by the trial court to check the reliability of evidence before relying on it. So the argument we propose is this:  Argue: The decision in Diallo v. Sweden shows that in order to ‘exercise control over the adequacy of interpretation’, as required by Recital 24 of the Directive and the Charter, the trial court must, in reaching a decision on the substance, have regard to the quality of interpretation provided during police questioning. Accordingly, this approach should also be followed under the Directive. 32 Diallo v. Sweden, cited above note 12, paragraphs 23, 29-31. 31