On Wednesday 18 December, the European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation (Eurojust) published its annual update on the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) relating to the European arrest warrant (EAW).
This document provides an overview of the decisions taken over the past year by the CJEU concerning the application of Framework Decision 2002/584/JHA on the European arrest warrant and the surrender procedures between Member States, in order to facilitate the uniform application of the EAW by promoting cross-border judicial cooperation.
Divided into thematic sections, the report groups the judgments according to central legal concepts linked to the application of the European arrest warrant, such as procedural guarantees, double criminality and the protection of fundamental rights.
The procedural guarantees cover subjects such as the rights of the defence and the conditions for the validity of arrest warrants, while the section on dual criminality deals with the criteria for verifying whether the offence for which a warrant is issued corresponds to an offence recognised in the executing Member State.
To facilitate practical use of this document, a detailed index and a chronological list of judgments give legal practitioners rapid access to the information they need to inform decisions, support legal arguments or correctly apply the harmonised rules in cross-border cases.
Among the developments, the section on the protection of fundamental rights analyses several recent rulings, including Breian (C-318/24 PPU), in which the CJEU notes the obligation of national judicial authorities to request additional information before rejecting an EAW. The GN case (C-261/22) illustrates the inclusion of the best interests of the child in surrender decisions. In Alchaster (C-202/24), the Court clarified the specific rules governing post-Brexit cooperation agreements.
In addition, the section on judgments given in absentia demonstrates the CJEU’s approach to the primacy of the harmonised conditions laid down by Union law. In Generalstaatsanwaltschaft Berlin (C-396/22 to C-398/22), the Court specified that the judicial authorities of the Member States are required to comply with the conditions laid down in Article 4a(1) of Framework Decision 2002/584/JHA.
These provisions set out the circumstances in which a European arrest warrant can be executed, even if the person concerned did not attend the trial.
Read the report: https://aeur.eu/f/ev9 (Original version in French by Nithya Paquiry)