Comparative Remarks

The objective of this Chapter is to give a concise report on some of the most relevant trends emerging from a comparative analysis on national legal frameworks concerning the procedural safeguards of the suspected or accused in criminal proceedings. In particular, the analysis focuses on those rights included in the six Directives issued in the aftermath of the Stockholm Programme, and encompasses nine Member States, namely Bulgaria, Croatia, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and the Netherlands. Such legal systems had been examined in the course of the research under a twofold perspective. The first methodology is a transversal legal comparative approach. The second perspective adopted in the research originates from an innovative multi- disciplinary approach, that combined legal and computer science expertise. Through the elaboration of “harmonization indexes” and “heat maps” based on Artificial Intelligence technology, this analysis highlighted similarities and lacunas in the recognition of defence rights across domestic systems, thanks to a semantic and textual examination of legal texts. This method, therefore, allowed to cross- check the results of traditional legal analysis, trying at bypassing, by way of automated assessments, some problematic features typical of comparative studies, such as linguistic discrepancies and ontological divergencies