May 2, 2024. NGOs from five European countries – France, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Spain – launch a campaign “ Minor Offenses, Major Punishment ” to end the significant and unfair punishment of minor offenses. They call for an end to these injustices, starting with demanding that EU-guaranteed procedural rights – including the presumption of innocence, access to a lawyer, legal aid, interpretation and translation as well as protections for minors – also apply to minor offenses.
Mitali Nagrecha, coordinator of Berlin-based Justice Collective and co-initiator of the campaign says,
« We observe that the increasing criminalization of minor offenses disproportionately targets marginalized communities and regularly violates basic human rights. Fast-track procedures allow for arbitrary punishment without proper consideration of facts or injustice. It is time to extend EU Directives to minor offenses. »
Across Europe people are increasingly criminalized and punished for alleged minor offenses, often without basic procedural rights. The enforcement of minor offenses disparately targets people from racialized communities, people experiencing poverty, and others who are marginalized. These practices are widespread, and punishment for minor offenses is “major”, meaning they have significant impacts on people’s lives, including insurmountable fines, jail, and negative immigration consequences.
Reflecting a Europe-wide trend towards ever-faster and simplified legal procedures in the name of efficiency, fast-track procedures facilitate criminalization at a large scale, without due consideration of the underlying facts or inequities. This paves the way for arbitrary, abusive and discriminatory enforcement.
In some places, widespread and discriminatory punishment persists in part because governments have extended police powers so that police are relatively unconstrained by due process or the rule of law. Profiling by the police also means people are disproportionately controlled because of their poverty, migration or social status, presumed racial, ethnic, national, or social origins and identities, gender or sexuality, housing status, and/or the intersection of these and other factors.
Some enforcement is aimed at removing people perceived as “undesirable” from public places, often with fines for public order offenses. In other cases, people are sanctioned for so-called poverty-offenses such as riding the train without a ticket or petty theft. People are routinely punished in cases related to drugs, counter to evidence-based practices such as drug regulation and harm reduction. Minor offense punishment falls disproportionately on people from marginalized groups.
Enforcement of minor offenses across Europe routinely violate people’s fundamental rights under the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, including the rights to an effective remedy and fair trial (Article 47), the presumption of innocence and right of defence (Article 48), the principles of legality and proportionality (Article 49), the right to equality before the law (Article 20), the prohibition of discrimination (Article 21), and the freedoms of movement and residence (Article 45).
European Union law allows for these realities in part because it exempts minor offenses from directives guaranteeing fundamental procedural protections for individuals in minor cases.
Lanna Hollo, delegate of Paris-based (RE)Claim and co-initiator of the campaign says,
“Over the last years, the problem of discriminatory enforcement of minor offenses has grown significantly. Without basic procedural protections, individuals have no means of defending themselves against wrongful accusations. European lawmakers have a key role to play to bring an end to this widespread abuse and restore the rule of law.”
The campaign calls on the EU to expand the procedural rights directives to include minor cases and invites all candidates in the European Parliamentary elections to take a stand on this issue.
