Scrapping the European Arrest Warrant will be one of the benefits of Brexit

The government will not be seeking to stay part of the European Arrest Warrant in its trade deal with the European Union. Instead, the government is hoping to negotiate “fast-track extradition arrangements” that it says will provide “greater safeguards”.

Yesterday “European Arrest Warrant” was trending on Twitter as remainers delighted in a new reason to lambast the government and bemoan Brexit. The Liberal Democrats said the decision was “robbing our police of a vital crime-fighting tool” and Labour echoed the sentiment.

So, is this another example of a benefit of European Union membership we are losing because of Brexit? This entirely relied upon your perspective. Many people think in black and white and certainly a very strong case can be made in favour of the EAW. The success stories are numerous. However, for anyone concerned about individual liberty and human rights, there are serious causes for concern.

The EAW is an EU law based on mutual recognition where judicial decisions of one EU members states must be automatically acknowledged by all other member states. This simplified the process of turning over convicts or individuals charged with a crime to another member state to serve a prison sentence to be tried for a crime.

Extradition before the EAW was a long and complicated process often made via diplomatic channels and so inherently political. The EAW introduced a fast track procedure where the courts decide on the surrender of suspects to other member states.

When a person accused or convicted of a crime is suspected to be in another part of the EU, an EAW is issued requesting the arrest and surrender of the suspect. This means when a request comes in the UK must automatically surrender the suspect to the member state which issued the EAW. The surrender of our own citizens is obligatory in many cases, which was unthinkable before the EAW existed.

There are a very limited number of grounds for which the surrender of a suspect can be denied, and surrender can only, supposedly, be stopped on the basis of human rights and the rule of law if a member state persistently breaches these principles. EU institutions are trusted to determine if there has been such a breach, in line with Article 7 of the Treaty on European Union. This has never happened.

What is the problem? Do we not want our police to be equipped with the very best crime fighting “tools”? Do we want to return to the days of the Costa Del Crime?

The problem is simple. The very notion of mutual recognition of judicial decisions across the EU is fundamentally flawed. This isn’t the same as mutual recognition product standards within the single market based on regulatory harmonisation; people’s freedom is at stake here. The EAW is based on the demonstrably false premise that all criminal justice systems in the EU are equal and all member states adhere strictly to the European Convention on Human Rights. This is not the case.

Frankly, when it comes to human rights violations in detention conditions, fair trial, due process, there are EU member states that rank little better than Russia or Turkey. Greece, for example, is a serial human rights violator. Then there is Cyprus – do we really believe their system trustworthy and equivalent to our own? Ask the British teenager who was  allegedly gang-raped while on holiday there before the police compelled her to say she had made a false statement. After the ordeal, a Cypriot court gave her a four-month suspended sentence on the grounds that she was guilty of causing “public mischief”.

Meanwhile, Poland has been found by the European Court of Human Rights to be in violation of the prohibition of torture or degrading treatment. In 2018, an Irish high court judge refused to extradite a suspected drugs trafficker to Poland due to concerns about the integrity of the Polish justice system.

The UK extradited 2,499 people from 2013 to 2016. Romania is the worse violator of human rights in the EU, and the right to fair trial and the prohibition of torture are regularly flouted. Its appalling prison conditions amount to inhumane and degrading treatment. Not to mention its systematic corruption and cases of politically motivated persecution.

It isn’t only Eurosceptics who are concerned about the EAW, with human rights and civil liberty campaigners frequently raising concerns. The advocacy group, Liberty, has long called for reform of the EAW to include the requirement that a basic or prima facie case be made in a domestic court before a British resident is extradited.

The UK government now wants a new agreement to “provide for fast-track extradition arrangements” based on the EU’s existing agreement with Norway and Iceland, but with “appropriate further safeguards”.

A Home Office spokeswoman said: “The safety and security of our citizens is the government’s top priority, which is why we have said the agreement with the EU should provide for fast-track extradition arrangements based on the EU’s arrangements with Norway and Iceland.”

“These arrangements would include greater safeguards than those within the European Arrest Warrant.”

This is a cause for celebration. There you have it, a tangible benefit of Brexit. Could this lead to delays in criminals facing justice, perhaps even evading it? Quite possibly, but it’s a basic liberal principle that it is better for ten guilty men go free than a single innocent to suffer injustice. The “Liberal” Democrats don’t seem to think so, but we already knew their name was false advertising.

The EAW remains unreformed so this is an opportunity to negotiate a new system that safeguards the freedom and human rights of British subjects. Top of the agenda must be that judges in this country must be able to properly examine the case against the accused, and an extradition request based on a lack of or dubious evidence.

The EAW erodes individual liberty and national sovereignty. The authoritarian Theresa May didn’t think so and intended to opt back in, so it is a credit to this government for choosing to do otherwise.