European Arrest Warrant

The European Arrest Warrant (EAW) is an arrest warrant valid throughout all member states of the European Union (EU). Once issued, it requires another member state to arrest and transfer a criminal suspect or sentenced person to the issuing state so that the person can be put on trial or complete a detention period. An EAW can only be issued for the purposes of conducting a criminal prosecution (not merely an investigation), or enforcing a custodial sentence. It can only be issued for offences carrying a minimum penalty of 1 year or more in prison. Where the sentence has already been passed, an EAW can only be issued if the prison term to be enforced is at least four months long. The introduction of the EAW system was intended to increase the speed and ease of extradition throughout EU countries by removing the political and administrative phases of decision-making which had characterised the previous system of extradition in Europe, and converting the process into a system run entirely by the judiciary. Since it was first implemented in 2004 the use of the EAW has risen. Member state country evaluation reports suggest that the number of EAWs issued has increased from approximately 3,000 in 2004 to 15,200 in 2009, but dropped back to 10,400 in 2013. Measures which sought to harmonise extradition rules across EU member states date from the mid-1990s when the EU instituted two treaties under the Maastricht Treaty which sought to streamline existing extradition procedures under the European Convention on Extradition. In 1999 the European Council further proposed to abolish formal extradition procedures for sentenced persons. However it was not until the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks in the United States that much more far-reaching proposals were mooted. While originally proposed as an anti-terrorist measure the European Arrest Warrant soon became applicable to a wide range of ordinary crimes. The political decision to adopt the EAW legislation was made at the Laeken European Council in December 2001, the text being finally agreed in June of the following year. The European Arrest Warrant was established by an EU framework decision in 2002. Framework decisions were legal instruments of the third pillar of the European Community akin to directives and only take effect when implemented by EU member states by transposing them into their domestic law. The European Arrest Warrant replaced the 1957 European Convention on Extradition (ECE) which had previously governed extraditions between most member states, and various legal instruments which had been adopted to streamline the process of extradition under the ECE such as the 1989 agreement on the simplification of the transmission requests for extradition, the 1995 Convention on simplified extradition procedure, the 1996 Convention on extradition between Member States, and the provisions of the Schengen Agreement regarding extradition. The EAW Framework Decision came into force on 1 January 2004 in eight member states, namely Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. By 1 November 2004 all member states had implemented the legislation except Italy, which did so on 22 April 2005. Bulgaria and Romania implemented the Decision on their accession in 2007. When the UK exercised its opt-out from the area of freedom, security and justice in 2014, its request to continue participating in the EAW was approved. There are several features of the European Arrest Warrant which distinguish it from the treaties and arrangements which previously governed extradition between EU member states. EAWs are not issued through diplomatic channels, they can be executed for a wide variety of offences without any requirement that the offence to which the warrant relates corresponds to an offence under the law of the state asked to execute the warrant, there is no exception for political, military or revenue offences, and there is no exception clause allowing a state to refuse to surrender its own nationals.