Insight
Arrested development: Why Brexit Britain cannot keep the European Arrest Warrant by Camino Mortera-Martinez 10 July 2017
The European Arrest Warrant (EAW) has made it easier for the UK to extradite criminals. But once it leaves the EU, Britain will find it almost impossible to negotiate as good an arrangement as the EAW. In 1998, fearing that the increasing “Europeanisation” of EU criminal law would force Britain’s common law system to be more like continental civil law ones, Jack Straw, then Home Secretary, came up with a solution. Why not take some of the principles of mutual recognition of standards which had worked so well in the internal market and extend them to court decisions? This concept became the basis for the European Arrest Warrant. The EAW, in force since 2004, allows EU countries to issue warrants requesting another member-state to surrender someone within 90 days. The EAW has helped in fighting terrorism: in 2005, Hussain Osman, one of the perpetrators of the failed London attacks on July 21st, was arrested in Italy and surrendered to the UK in under a week. The UK, a net exporter of criminals, has benefitted enormously from the EAW. Since 2010, the UK has extradited 6,514 suspects to other member-states, and got 800 suspects back from other EU countries. This insight is the third in a three part series, and looks at whether the UK will be able to continue being part of the EU’s extradition system and, if not, what could be the alternative. The EAW, which is open only to EU member-states, is exceptional in three ways. First, under the EAW, member-states should surrender people suspected of one of 32 serious offences (including terrorism, drug trafficking and human smuggling), regardless of whether what they are accused of is also considered a crime in the country where they are located. In most extradition treaties, a country is only obliged to extradite somebody if the crime they are wanted for is also considered a criminal offence under its domestic law (the principle of ‘double criminality’). Second, the EAW led to some countries lifting constitutional bans on extraditing their own nationals. Under international rules, a country is not obliged to surrender their own nationals (though some countries do so). The EAW abolished this CER INSIGHT: Arrested development: Why Brexit Britain cannot keep the European Arrest Warrant 10 July 2017
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