"How to Improve Mutual Trust Between Member States, EU institutions and agencies: the case of the European Arrest Warrant."

Speech delivered on Tue 18th Oct 2005

The European Arrest Warrant: An evaluation

As the Chairman of the European Parliament's Justice and Home Affairs committee and its rapporteur for terrorism in 2001 I had the honour of piloting the EAW through this House.

I believed then, as I do now, that the European Arrest Warrant offers practical solutions to issues of the greatest concern to Europe's citizens..

...issues like terrorism and internationally crime.

Experience has shown that the EWA is Europe's chief asset in the fight against cross-border crime, allowing judicial authorities to reduce the extradition process to an average of 13 days in over 50% of cases.

13 days! As opposed to the senseless months of waiting that went before.

With a maximum wait of 60 days, the EWA's a big improvement.

And Member States are using it. With almost 3000 warrants issued, 653 people arrested and 104 surrendered up to September 2004, it's already surpassed extradition in volume terms.

That's not to say there haven't been teething problems. In addition to delays in implementation, controversial court decisions in Poland and Germany have raised eyebrows - and accusations - that the EWA violates fundamental rights.

As a Liberal democrat I bow to nobody in my concern for Human Rights. Human Right issues were debated when we took this measure through. I can say with confidence however that problems with the EWA are quantitative and not qualitative.

Court decisions in Poland and Germany did not attack the EAW itself but the national laws which failed to use the full reach and flexibility of the EU measure to render the EWA in conformity to their constitutions.

The fact that the Poles are considering amendment of Article 55(1) of their constitution as their "highest priority" strongly backs this view.

And one look at Austria reveals how it used this leeway to the last millimetre to protect its citizens from extradition - almost to the point where the EWA may never be used there at all.

In any case, all Member States are bound by the ECHR and EHR case-law.

The issue lies not with the EWA, but in a lack of trust and harmonisation which stretches back to my time as Chairman of the Justice and Home Affairs Committee when I insisted on Minimal Procedural Guarantees to avert precisely such problems.

Those have been held up in Council since 2001 and remain unratified today, with a Framework Directive sitting at the bottom of the Council's in tray.

That is unacceptable to this House, unacceptable to national parliaments, and unacceptable to Europe's citizens, who are looking to the Council to deliver.

And it is simply one more reason why we must campaign for more openness and transparency in the Council in the months to come."