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Written question asked by Lord Inglewood (Conservative) on Tuesday, 21 October 2014, in the House of Lords. It was due for an answer on Tuesday, 4 November 2014. It was answered by Lord Bates (Conservative) on Monday, 17 November 2014 on behalf of the Home Office.

European Arrest Warrants

Question

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the event of the United Kingdom not opting back into the provisions of the European Arrest Warrant, which member states still have on their statute books the legislation necessary to revert to the Council of Europe Convention on Extradition 1957.

Answer

All EU member states have ratified the 1957 Council of Europe Convention on Extradition (ECE). Consequently, they will all have legislation that allows them to operate the ECE with other ECE signatories who do not use the Arrest Warrant. However, a number of EU member states have subsequently passed specific legislation to implement the Arrest Warrant and would need to pass new domestic legislation in order to allow them to operate the ECE with the UK. In some cases, this could be a lengthy process. For example, we believe that it would take the Netherlands at least a year to pass the necessary legislation and during this time they would not be able to issue extradition requests to the UK, or respond to UK extradition requests. Effectively, this would make both countries a safe haven for each others’ criminals.

Under the 1957 European Convention on Extradition, 22 Member States may also refuse to extradite its own nationals which means that some people may never face justice. In non-European Arrest Warrant cases, the following EU Member States have an absolute bar on extraditing their own nationals to the UK:

Austria
Belgium
Czech Republic
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Latvia
Luxembourg
Slovakia
Slovenia
Spain
Sweden

A further nine have made declarations to the 1957 European Convention on Extradition to the effect that they will not extradite their own nationals:

Bulgaria
Croatia
Cyprus
Estonia
Hungary
Lithuania
Poland
Portugal
Romania

Secondary information

Type
Written question
Reference
HL2260
Session
2014-15
Subjects
European Convention on Extradition European arrest warrants
Link
View this Written question on www.parliament.uk