Brussels, 11/05/2004 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday, the Netherlands will become the seventeenth Member State to implement the European arrest warrant. This instrument will replace cumbersome extradition proceedings, for people wanted or found guilty, with a fast procedure between legal authorities within the European Union, without political or administrative visas.
The European arrest warrant, which was approved after the attacks of 11 September, should have been in force in the fifteen Member States on 1 January, and in the ten new ones on 1 May. The United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Denmark, Finland and Sweden were ready on 1 January. Since then, Luxembourg, France, Austria- and this Wednesday, the Netherlands- have joined the list, according to the European Commission. Lagging behind are Germany, Greece and Italy. The Italian Justice Minister, Roberto Castelli, long opposed to the adoption of the text by the European Justice Ministers, spoke out again last week against it, according to the agency Ansa, although the text is being examined by the Italian parliament. The European Commission states that half of the ten new Member States- Cyprus, Hungary, Poland, Lithuania and Slovenia- are already applying the European arrest warrant.
The delays and hesitance in the application of the European arrest warrant, which is a leading instrument of the European response to the attacks of 11 September, are symbolic of delays in the adoption and implementation of European legal co-operation instruments, which came in for criticism after Europe was in turn hit, in Madrid on 11 March. In a confidential report, the European Commission listed these delays (EUROPE of 27 March). In future, the new cut-off date for the European arrest warrant is the end of June 2004. At the European Council of 26 and 27 March, in their statement on terrorism, the Heads of State and Government of the 25 undertook to respect this new deadline. Delays in the European arrest warrant are the more alarming because in March 2002, six Member States committed to implement it, as anticipated, in the first half of 2003.
Proposed by the European Commission in September 2001 and included on the agenda before the attacks, the warrant found political agreement three months later, in record time. It consists of a "legal decision issued by a Member State with a view to the arrest and extradition by one Member State of a person wanted for the exercise of criminal proceedings or the execution of a sentence or measure for deprivation of liberty". It can be issued for offences carrying at least one year's prison sentence, or, if sentence has already been passed, for three or four months of imprisonment. In must be carried out in no more than ten days if the person agrees to extradition, sixty if they refuse. For a list of thirty-two offences, assuming the action carries are least three years of imprisonment, the mandate must be applied automatically, without verification of dual criminality, which means without making sure that the action is an infringement under the legislation of the State to which the mandate is addressed. Terrorism, trafficking in human beings, murder, money laundering and racism are included on this list. With the exception of infringements included on this list, a State may refuse to execute a mandate if the act is not a crime under its legislation. A State may also refuse if respect for human rights is in question, and for several other reasons, for example if it is already pursuing the person for the same deeds (EUROPE of 8 to 13 December 2001 and the Official Journal L190 of 18 July 2002).
In a letter accompanying the announced implementation of the arrest warrant in his country, the Dutch Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner stated that the Netherlands would continue to handle extradition requests under older extradition agreements applicable, as long as requests came from Member States who are not yet applying the arrest warrant. "I hope that the application of this transitional provision will remain limited in time, given the imperative of fighting terrorism", wrote the Dutch Ministers. European arrest warrants established in another official language of the Union must be accompanied by a translation into English.
The implementation of the warrant has already had its first teething troubles. The Spanish legal authorities' extradition request for suspected members of the Basque terrorism organisation ETA detained in Belgium was turned down, either due to the prescription of the facts, or to concerns about respect for the rights of the defence. The new head of the Spanish government, José Luis Zapatero, complained about this at his first meeting with his Belgian counterpart Guy Verhofstadt. The European Commission is putting together a report for the end of the year on implementation of the European arrest warrant. For the time being, it has no specific data on the number of warrants already issues and executed, but stresses that Spain is the country that has issued the most.