Defence Areas and Limits in the Investigations of the European Public Prosecutor

Abstract

The creation of a European Public Prosecutor’s Office stems from a need extraneous to defence guarantees. However, the Author tries to draw a map of the provisions from which a guarantee statute can be extracted for those who will be subject to investigation and actions by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office. The Author concludes with an altogether positive assessment about the defence statute before the European Public Prosecutor’s Office but underlines that some critical points still remain, above all the risk that relying on provisions and principles in diverse normative texts may undermine accessibility to such a statute, known to only a small number of experts.