Recommendations In the meetings of the national working group94 and at subsequent roundtable events95, the following recommendations to the challenges identified above were elaborated upon: • Legislation is required to ensure that the rights protected by the Directives apply equally to people in police detention and in detention following formal accusation. • Effective access to a lawyer of the suspect’s choice immediately after detention should be ensured as a matter of law and detailed instructions should be issued setting out the practical steps police officers must take to ensure detainees’ access to a lawyer.96 • The written information that is provided to suspects should be re-written to ensure that it is in plain and accessible language, followed by an oral explanation and a recording of the process of provision of the information. • Investigation authorities should have access to an electronic register for legal and non-legal aid lawyers. • Immediate access of lawyers to their clients and a need to facilitate effective assistance by a lawyer prior to any interrogation should be introduced to eliminate any chance of admitting manipulated or coerced statements as evidence in the case. • Police officers should be trained on the standards required by the Directives and ECtHR jurisprudence and in investigation techniques to eliminate manipulation and undue compulsion, to abandon the current interrogation practice in ‘preliminary talks’ to obtain self-incriminating statements from detainees. 94 95 The national working group was set up in September 2018. Two roundtable events were held, one in Sofia on 11 October 2018 and one in Plovdiv on 5 November 2018. The events were attended by defence lawyers, judges, prosecutors, interpreters, officials from the Ministry of Interior, and representatives from civil society organisations. Instruction 8121з-78 of 24 January 2015 of the Ministry of Interior, available in Bulgarian at: http://dv.parliament.bg/DVWeb/showMaterialDV.jsp;jsessionid=C90D4AE4E1A53C0CD2D603FEF8CF166D?idMat=91688. 96 34