Brussels, 23/07/2010 (Agence Europe) - Of the 12,000 European Arrest Warrants issued last year, around one quarter resulted in the arrest of the wanted person, a level which is very similar to 2008 figures. Poland is the country of the European Union which issued the most European Arrest Warrants (EAWs) in 2009, with 4,844. Second on the list is Germany (2,433), with France in third place (1,240). All of the countries which issued EAWs sent them using the Schengen Information System (SIS), in other words via Interpol. Of all of the European Arrest Warrants issued, only around one quarter of them, or 3,100, led to the arrest of the wanted person: Poland (1,367), Germany (777), France (420). The member states which received the most arrest requests were Spain (1,629), France (967), the Netherlands (683), the Czech Republic (310) and Poland (286). The number of people actually arrested as a result of these EAWs was around 4,400 in 2009, 1,208 of whom in Germany, 1,232 in Spain and 789 in France. And the number of people actually extradited was around 4,000. In Spain, 504 people agreed to be extradited, but 740 refused. In the Netherlands, 67 agreed and 341 refused. No statistics are available to show the number of judgments made after an EAW was issued. Belgium, the United Kingdom, Hungary and Italy did not submit any figures. (B.C./transl.fl)