2. Scope of this Toolkit This Toolkit is not exhaustive. It covers certain issues which have been highlighted to us by members of the LEAP network as posing a particular challenge to the conduct of criminal defence. These include: (I) Notification of procedural rights; (II) Notification of Accusations; (III) Access to the case file at specific stages; and (IV) the application of the Directive to witnesses and other non-suspects. Many other issues may arise. For instance, at the time of writing, a reference7 is pending before the CJEU asking whether the Directive precludes a rule of national law requiring a person to designate a person for service of documents when an appeal deadline runs from such service. There are myriad other potential questions so we encourage you to treat this Toolkit as a starting point only. 3. How to use this Toolkit a. How the content is organised Much of the content of the Directive is derived from the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights (‘ECtHR’), and there is no doubt that one of the major functions of the Directive is to articulate those standards as codified norms. Accordingly, for each thematic area the Toolkit reviews the ECtHR case-law to help you understand the issues that the Directive articulates. We then consider the provisions of the Directive itself. Most provisions of the Directives leave considerable room for interpretation, and at the time of writing8 there are not yet any rulings of the Court of Justice of the EU (‘CJEU’) on any of the Directives. Accordingly, we try to make clear – by the use of bullet points in the body of the text – if we are making any assumptions about their meaning. Based upon our understanding of the Directive, we then make concrete suggestions about how to use it in a given case. These involve both practical steps (e.g. documenting and challenging violations at the pre-trial stage) and legal steps (e.g. invoking the Directive before a court). In order to distinguish clearly between these different levels of analysis: Provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights and citations from case-law of the European Court of Human Rights appear in yellow shading, with a single border, to represent their nature as an irreducible minimum. They are presented in italics. Provisions of European Union law or citations from the case-law of the Court of Justice of the European Union appear in green shading, with a double border, to represent their nature as complementary, possibly more extensive protection. Suggestions by Fair Trials on using the Directive in practice appear in blue shading, with a triple border, to represent your use of the Directives in the local legal context. We try to be up front about when we are making a suggestion with the symbol ‘’. 7 Request for a preliminary ruling from the Amtsgericht Laufen (Germany) lodged on 30 April 2014 — Criminal proceedings against Gavril Covaci (OJ 2014 C 253, p. 22). 8 This Toolkit is published in March 2015. 6