Criminal Law - European Arrest Warrant

The European arrest warrant, the purpose of which is to adopt a simple, expeditious and efficient extradition system within the EU, entered into force on 1 January 2004 in eight Member States of the European Union (Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the UK including Gibraltar). The other Member States have failed to meet the implementation deadline laid down in the Framework Decision and their national extradition rules continue to apply.

The European arrest warrant replaces the existing bilateral extradition procedures used between individual EU Member States in order to shorten the extradition procedure to 60 to 90 days. It also replaces the 1957 European Extradition Convention and relating European legal extradition rules.

Introduction of the European arrest warrant into the Czech legal system will bring the following three essential changes: (i) it will change the rule that Czech citizens may not be extradited abroad for the purposes of conducting a criminal prosecution or executing a custodial sentence, (ii) change in the prohibition of a double criminality in respect of 32 offences (i.e. corruption, fraud, money laundering, computer-related crime, counterfeiting and piracy of products), if they are punishable in the issuing Member State by a custodial sentence of at least three years, (iii) the decision-making powers in respect of extradition procedure is transferred from the central administrative authority (that is in most of the EU Member States Ministry of Justice) to courts.

The European arrest warrant may be ruled by a court of an EU Member State in respect of a person that stays in another EU Member State, if it is necessary to request his/her extradition for the purposes of conducting a criminal prosecution or executing a custodial sentence. Execution of the European arrest warrant is subject to the fact that the respective person is punishable for offence by imprisonment for a maximum period of at least one year or was sentenced to imprisonment for a period of at least four months.

The Council Framework Decision on European arrest warrant is binding for all EU Member States and no transition period has been provided for the future member states in the Treaty of Accession.

Consequently, the implementation of the European arrest warrant into the Czech legal system must be terminated not later than on the day of accession. Draft new legal regulation was submitted to this end to the Czech Parliament in the mid-November 2003. Given that the implementation of the European arrest warrant into Czech law will change the principle of non-extradition of Czech citizens abroad, an amendment to the Bill of fundamental rights and freedoms will be necessary and is currently discussed in the Chamber of Deputies. Similarly, an amendment of the Criminal Code and Code of Criminal Procedure will be required.