The standard of a fair trial is derived from the requirement to protect human rights, which is the guiding principle of the criminal procedure and which requires the court to conduct the procedure respecting the requirements for equality and procedural balance of the parties. The key elements or mechanisms for ensuring a fair procedure are the fundamental procedural guarantees and the procedural rights derived from them, which in particular apply to the defendant not only as an object, but as a subject of the procedure. This means that the defendant has a wide possibility of defence and at the same time protection of his personality, freedom and dignity. Therefore, it is important to understand the content and scope of fundamental procedural guarantees and their interpretation in judicial practice. The master's thesis focuses on the presumption of innocence, the adversarial principle, the principle of equality of arms and individual aspects of the right to defence according to Article 29 of the Slovenian Constitution and Article 6 of the ECHR. Respecting each individual guarantee and ensuring the consistency among them is crucial for the implementation of an effective defence, as they are interconnected and overlap in certain parts. On the other hand, while dealing with guarantees and procedural rights, their relative nature was also revealed, as a possibility that the opposing rights, principles or interests may prevail. Among these prevailing principles there are the principle of prohibition of the abuse of procedural rights and the principle of swift and efficient procedure, which prevent the defendant from abusing his rights and strive for continuous and concentrated execution of the procedure. These principles reflect in the rules on preclusion in the Criminal Procedure Act (Article 285.a, Paragraph 3, Point 4). However this rule is rarely used in practice, since in the case of a relevant evidentiary proposal, the tendency to establish the truth prevails, and thus the principle of material truth and the right of defence come to the fore.
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