Child Protection and Legal Standards for Children in Criminal Justice with Regards to the EU Strategy on the Rights of the Child

Children are the most vulnerable members of our society and cannot manage the risk of poverty and social exclusion alone. Crimes against children are common. The European Unions’s (EU’s) Strategy on the Rights of the Child is a policy framework that enforces children’s rights as a horizontal issue in EU policies and legislation. The implementation aims to support European and national efforts to promote children’s well-being and reduce child poverty. The issue of age is of paramount importance from the point of view of criminal prosecution and applicable legal consequences, notably whether we speak about child protection or a criminal justice case. The EU Strategy on the Rights of the Child follows a holistic approach, and its overall goal is to create a better society in the EU and worldwide in six major areas, containing the child-friendly justice, which is in the focus of this study. The aim of the study is to explore the deepening of children’s rights in criminal proceedings, to list some relevant case law of the European Court of Justice (CJEU) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), and to point out that the incorporation of European legal standards into Hungarian jurisprudence is crucial for improving the protection of children’s rights. The relationship between EU standards and child-friendly justice in Hungarian criminal proceedings is complex and requires careful consideration; it can help to ensure a more child-centred enforcement of children’s rights, while at the same time highlighting the European requirements already in place in our criminal proceedings.