NATIONAL TRANSPOSITION OF THE FRAMEWORK DECISIONS Regarding the TP FD, Austria stressed the issue of the lengthiness of the proceedings, stating that if a transfer is postponed or refused, it is primarily due to lack of timely response by the issuing authority. Many experts have pointed out that cross-border proceedings are lengthy and bureaucratic. The authorities prefer to have the execution of a custodial measure in Austria rather than having to physically move an individual across borders. This consideration sometimes seems to take priority over the needs of the most vulnerable detainees.413 In respect of the PAS FD, partner countries like Austria414 and Slovenia415 have reported that no additional safeguards were included in national laws concerning persons with intellectual and/or psychosocial disabilities. During the consultation workshop, an Italian expert added that safeguards were all the more necessary in the context of probation, as it could require that the individual moves to another country and has their sentence translated. It was observed that such adaptation was much more difficult than a TP proceedings for instance, where the individual only has to be sent to another state. The participant evoked examples from Italy where interpretation and translation during the proceedings were of poor quality and also added there was a need for cultural adaptation on the part of officials and interpreters. On both the ESO and the PAS FDs, as indicated by the comparative tables on national transposition laws, none of the six partner countries have added provisions on criminal responsibility related to disability (with Lithuania having a more open provision referring to the norms of international law or the laws of the Republic of Lithuania, see Section 4). Although lack of criminal liability is included as a ground for the refusal to execute all four FDs in the case where the individual was a minor, no transposition laws mentioned mental disability explicitly. On the PAS FD, only Bulgaria, Italy and Lithuania have a provision on criminal responsibility, but only in relation to the age limit and not on disability. 98 4.3 SAFEGUARDS IN RELATION TO PERSONS WITH INTELLECTUAL AND/OR PSYCHOSOCIAL DISABILITIES IN TRANSPOSITION LAWS 4.3.1 CONSENT IN THE CONTEXT OF TRANSFERS 4.3.1.1 INCLUSION OF CONSENT IN THE LEGISLATION Consent is a component which can be found in all four FDs, emanating from the individual concerned, the executing State or the issuing State, a component which can play a role before the trial or after. The consent to transfer from a State to another by the individual is the one on which this study primarily focuses, as it raises several issues concerning fundamental rights applications. Consent related to individuals’ transfer can be found in the EAW FD,416 ESO FD,417 TP FD.418 However, such consent-related provisions are not identical and do not uniformly grant the individual the possibility to refuse a transfer with full knowledge and understanding of the situation. Regarding the EAW FD, it is clear that consent is amongst the safeguards that need specific attention regarding persons with intellectual and/or psychosocial disabilities. Among the four FDs, it is the only one that allows for the individual to fully refuse a transfer. Article 11 states that “when a requested person is arrested, the executing competent judicial authority shall, in accordance with its national law, inform that person of the European arrest warrant and of its contents, and also of the possibility of consenting to surrender to the issuing judicial authority” and Art 13 states that “each Member State shall adopt the measures necessary to ensure that consent and, where appropriate, renunciation, as referred to in paragraph 1, are established in such a way as to show that the person concerned has expressed them voluntarily and in full awareness of the consequences. To that end, the requested person shall have the right to legal counsel.”