European Arrest Warrant

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The European Arrest Warrant (EAW, or more rarely, EUAW) is an arrest warrant to allow the arrest of criminal suspects and their transfer for trial or detention which is valid throughout the states of the European Union (EU). The EAW is an attempt to increase the speed of extradition throughout EU countries, as well as change the mechanism from having a "political and administrative phase" into a system run by the judiciary.

The United Kingdom Home Office has defined it as a ^[4]:

"common arrest and surrender warrant designed to provide efficient and effective justice within the EU, whilst protecting the rights of defendants and victims."

1 Principles of the EAW
2 History of legislation and implementation by member states
3 Use of the EAW
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Principles of the EAW

The EAW is a judicial judgment by a court of the member state for the arrest or surrender of a requested person that is in another member state. It is designed to meet the needs of justice, liberty and security within a single region. This can only be for the purposes of:

conducting a criminal prosecution
carrying out a custodial sentence or detention order

The EAW only applies to criminal acts where the sentence is at least 1 year long. It can also be applied for custodial sentences which are at least 4 months long.

[edit] History of legislation and implementation by member states

The basis of the EAW was agreed 'in principle' by member states of the EU at the Laeken Summit in December 2001, and the framework was adopted on June 13, 2002 in directive 2002/584/JHA. The 'Date of entry into force' was August 7, 2003, with the deadline for final implementation by member states to be December 31, 2002.

The legislation for the EAW came into force for 8 of the then 15 EU States on January 1, 2004, with the remaining 7 States missing the deadline. The States that had implemented the legislation on time were Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. However, by 1 November 2004 all EU States had implemented the legislation except for Italy, which adopted it on 22 April 2005 (L 69/2005)[5].

The EU Commission has evaluated the implementation of the EAW in a report issued in February 2005[6]. The report concludes that the legislation was adopted overall successfully although there are differences in the way each State implemented the directive.

Since the Framework Decision came into operation, the average time taken to execute a warrant is provisionally estimated to 43 days (as opposed to more than 9 months that it was before the EAW). This does not include these frequent cases where the person consents to surrender, for which the average time taken is 13 days.[7]

[edit] Use of the EAW

The first reported use of the EAW was in January 2004 when a Swedish suspect was arrested in Spain and transferred back to Sweden ^[8]. The EAW was also in the media due to a ruling in Germany in July 2005 that the German law implementing it was unconstitutional ^[9] ^[10]. In the same month the EAW was also brought up to allow the extradition of Osman Hussain, one of the suspects in the 21 July 2005 London bombings, back to Britain from Italy. EAW were also issued by Italian prosecutor Guido Salvini in 2005 against 22 CIA agents accused of the kidnapping of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr (Imam Rapito affair).

The EAW has also been used in a way which, according to the Council of the European Union, does not respect the principle of proportionality included in article 5 of the Treaty establishing the European Community. In particular, EAW have been issued in such minor cases as detention of 0.45 grams of cannabis; detention of 1,5 gram of marijuana; detention of 0.15 gram of heroin; detention of 3 ecstasy tablets; theft of two car tyres; driving a car under the influence of alcohol, where the limit was not significantly exceeded (0.81 mg/l) or theft of a piglet ^[1].

On the other hand, the EAW failed on other cases with significant media attention. The Irish Supreme Court refused to extradite an Irish citizen to Hungary who killed two children through negligent driving. While the Irish authorities never questioned the facts, the result and the fairness of the Hungarian trial, they argued that the person did not technically "flee" from Hungary, only "failed to return", therefore the legal basis of the extradition through the EAW is not established.^[2] ^[3] ^[4]