Criminal proceedings against Gavril Covaci.
Date: 2015-10-15
27. Consequently, the situation of a person such as Mr Covaci, who wishes to lodge an objection against a penalty order which has not yet acquired the force of res judicata  and of which he is the addressee, clearly falls within the scope of that directive, with the result that that person must be able to exercise the right to interpretation and translation guaranteed by that directive.
29. For those purposes, it should be noted that the Court has consistently held that, in interpreting a provision of EU law, it is necessary to consider not only its wording but also the context in which it occurs and the objectives pursued by the rules of which it is part (judgment in Rosselle , C‑65/14, EU:C:2015:339, paragraph 43 and the case-law cited).
43. As regards the question whether Article 3 of Directive 2010/64, which governs the right to translation of certain essential documents, confers the benefit of assistance with regard to translation on a person in a situation such as that of Mr Covaci, who wishes to lodge an objection in writing against a penalty order without the assistance of legal counsel, it should be observed that it follows from the very wording of that provision that that right is designed to ensure that the persons concerned are able to exercise their right of defence and to safeguard the fairness of the proceedings.
54. As is apparent from a reading of Article 3 in conjunction with Article 6 of that directive, the right mentioned in Article 1 of the directive concerns at least two separate rights.
61. Consequently, in accordance with Article 6 of Directive 2012/13, the service of a penalty order must be considered to be a form of communication of the accusation against the person concerned, with the result that it must comply with the requirements set out in that article.
62. It is true that, as the Advocate General observed at point 105 of his Opinion, Directive 2012/13 does not regulate the procedures whereby information about the accusation, provided for in Article 6 of that directive, must be provided to that person.
63. However, those procedures cannot undermine the objective referred to inter alia in Article 6 of Directive 2012/13, which, as is also apparent from recital 27 in the preamble to that directive, consists in enabling suspects or persons accused of having committed a criminal offence to prepare their defence and in safeguarding the fairness of the proceedings.
65. Though it is not relevant, in order to answer the question asked by the referring court, to rule on the appropriateness of such a limitation period of two weeks, it is important to observe that both the objective of enabling the accused person to prepare his defence and the need to avoid any kind of discrimination between (i) accused persons with a residence within the jurisdiction of the national law concerned and (ii) accused persons whose residence does not fall within that jurisdiction, who alone are required to appoint a person authorised to accept service of judicial decisions, require the whole of that period to be available to the accused person.
66. If the period of two weeks at issue in the main proceedings began to run from the time when the accused person actually became aware of the penalty order, that order providing information on the accusation within the meaning of Article 6 of Directive 2012/13, it would be certain that the whole of that period is available to that person.
67. By contrast, if, as in the present case, that period begins to run from the service of the penalty order on the person authorised by the accused person, the latter can effectively exercise his right of defence and the trial is fair only if he has the benefit of that period in its entirety, that is to say without the duration of that period being reduced by the time needed by the authorised person to transmit the penalty order to its addressee.