I – NOTIFICATION OF RIGHTS TO SUSPECTS A. THE ISSUE You will know only too well the importance of suspects being informed of their rights early in proceedings. For example, if the client knows that he has the right to remain silent and that this may not – in most places – be held against him, this may prevent the client giving a statement that could incriminate him. Equally, if not more crucially, if suspects are advised of their right to legal advice, and understand that it is not obstructive to invoke it, they are more likely to enjoy the other rights, in particular the right to silence and the right to interpretation if needed. The Directive responds to the problem of ineffective notification of rights. The Commission stated in relation to this Directive that, in many of the 8 million criminal proceedings in the EU every year, suspects are only informed about their defence rights orally, in a technical and incomprehensible language, or not at all.20 This deficiency has grave implications for the defence strategy, the likelihood of conviction and challenging detention. Anyone arrested and/or interrogated by the police will be in a stressful situation, and particularly vulnerable. The failure to inform a suspect effectively of his rights in such a way as to ensure he understands them means he may not know of them or be prepared to exercise them. Meetings held by Fair Trials in recent years revealed a number of problems:     Written notifications of procedural rights given to suspects are often drafted in complex legal terminology (sometimes simply reproducing provisions of the criminal procedure code) which are difficult to understand for many suspects; The right to silence is often notified in terms which make its exercise unattractive. The right may be expressed as the right to ‘refuse to answer questions’ and the letter (as the Austrian one did as of November 2014) may draw attention to possible adverse consequences such as increased possibility of pre-trial detention or the missing of an opportunity to clarify one’s innocence; Rights are notified only when a person is formally placed under suspicion / arrest / investigation; in some cases, persons questioned as witnesses are in fact suspected but are not informed of their rights and may provide answers which influence the course of the proceedings. The failure to notify rights effectively means that suspects ‘waive’ their rights to silence and to a lawyer without sufficient understanding of what those rights are, leading to doubt as to whether these ‘waivers’ are granted in knowing and unequivocal manner. B. THE ECHR BASELINE In its case-law on Article 6(1) and (3)(c), concerning the right to silence and the right to legal assistance, the ECtHR has commented on several occasions on the provision of information to suspects about their rights. This generally arises on the basis of its case-law concerning the ‘waiver’ of these rights, which the case-law suggests can be valid only if it is done knowingly: 20 Europa, 3 December 2010, Letter on Measure B: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-10-1652_en.htm?locale=en 14