How to complain

You can prevent a violation of your rights or rectify it during the trial by using various ways to complain. If you have not tried to complain about a potential violation during the trial, you may be unable to claim compensation afterwards.

Complaint procedures

You should try to complain as soon as you think that your rights have been violated. If you don’t, you will not be able to later claim that the violation was important to you and that you are entitled to compensation because the violation was not rectified in a timely manner. 

There are a number of ways that you can complain about a possible violation of your human rights during the criminal proceedings. There are separate procedures for complaints during the pre-trial stage and then during the trial stage. These complaint procedures have been created for you to effectively prevent a violation of your rights. Therefore, if you have not used them, you won’t be able to subsequently complain to the Ombudsman or international human rights institutions.

Compensation

If you have used the above complaint procedures but a violation of your rights was not been rectified during the trial, you may apply to national or international human rights institutions to establish whether your right to a fair trial has been violated and to obtain compensation.

Human Rights Guide

A European platform for human rights education