Roundup of news stories from across the EU (4.4.16)
04 April 2016
EU:
Panama Papers: EU's Canete implicated in leak (EUobserver, link):
"The wife of EU climate and energy commissioner Miguel Arias Canete has been named in a huge leak of documents relating to offshore companies called the Panama Papers, which have also led to accusations of shady financial dealings by the leaders of Iceland, Russia and Ukraine.
The findings, published by several media on Monday(4 April), originated in a cache of 11.5 million electronic files belonging to Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca that were initially given by an anonymous source to German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung in early 2015."
The legal struggle for the right to access to a lawyer in the Netherlands (Fair Trials, link):
"On 1st April 2014 the Dutch Supreme Court concluded that arrested suspects do not have the right to access to a lawyer during police interrogation. According to the Supreme Court it is the task of the legislator to grant this right in accordance with the Directive 2013/48/EU on the right of access to a lawyer in criminal proceedings. In practice this meant that in certain cases a lawyer was effectively banned from the hearing. Also, courts throughout the Netherlands have systematically denied requests to exclude incriminating statements made in absence of a lawyer as evidence.
Since the Directive was passed, there are no signs that this right will soon be introduced in the Netherlands and certainly not by the implementation deadline on 26 November 2016."
UK Government's housing policy targeting homeless families is 'tantamount to social cleansing’ (The Independent, link):
"Charities and politicians are demanding urgent changes to housing policy across Britain and warning that thousands of homeless children's lives may be at risk because they are disappearing from support services after being rehoused.
The calls come after an investigation by The Independent uncovered cases of homeless children dying from neglect and abuse after families were moved out of their local authority boundaries. Other evidence in the report suggested that the transfer of homeless families to other parts of the country could have resulted in suicides and miscarriages."