eurealist.co.uk

non partisan comment on the European Union and Westminster politics

 

The EU arrest Warrant

The EU arrest Warrant entered into force in January 2004 in eight EU member states - Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the UK. However, several other states have been very slow to adopt it.

Perhaps the President of the Czech Republic Václav Klaus had a good reason that others are reluctant to give this power away, he said in October 03 that this bill would have made it possible for Czech citizens to be extradited to other EU countries to face trial. The Czech parliament has since accepted the EU Arrest warrant, so obviously it no longer cares about its rights top defend its citizens He is of course quite correct that that is the very reason for the bill in the first place. However Mr Klaus said that to pass such a bill would mean to hand over a part of the country’s sovereignty and its right to protect its citizens.

I do not know about the Czech government rights or otherwise in this matter, but I do know that the British government not only has the right to protect the Queens subjects, but it has a sworn duty to do so. A duty which by acceding to this international treaty it has refused to accept, we as British subjects can no longer rely on the our own government to protect us in the event that any Judge in any EU state issues a warrant for our arrest, our own police will execute that warrant with no evidence, and assist that foreign power to transport us to their own country to face charges in their courts under their rules. An added effect of this measure, will be to subject all extradition between the EU Member to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. Thus further extending the powers of the union.

Tony Blair said “It is manifestly in this country’s interest to have a procedure that is a fast-track procedure for extraditing people to this country from European countries, what this will do is simplify the procedure enormously” he did not say that it would also seriously weaken the power of Parliament and the courts to protect the rights of British citizens and sweep away ancient rights as suspects would have no right to challenge extradition in their home country’s courts and would have no protection offered under our own laws. First they make us citizens of the EU then they make us subject to the laws of other countries then they ask us to pay our police to help them carry out these laws.
Although this law was introduced under the cover of terrorism it encompasses a great deal more than action against suspected terrorists, and there is no there is absolutely no guarantee that the European arrest warrant will not later be widened to other crimes or even abused, there is nothing preventing this. In fact as is usual with the EU method of introducing new developments “the nose of the camel approach” we the people are not told the full facts. This was based on a European Commission proposal, (document reference COM(2001)522 final/2). The agreement carries through the European Council conclusions of October 1999, in Tampere, which state that the formal extradition procedure should be abolished among the Member States. But of course what is really happening is the development of a single European judicial area. This can (as is the case in other areas) be used as a foundation to be built upon and extended later.

Treaty of Amsterdam created a space of freedom, of safety and of justice in the list of objectives of the Union; The Tampere European Council stated that “mutual recognition of judicial decisions and judgments … should become the cornerstone of judicial cooperation in both civil and criminal matters”. Although these extradition agreements were supposedly to apply only to those who had been sentenced in their home courts and were fleeing justice, the Commission said that there was “no reason for distinguishing between situations in which extradition is requested at the pre-trial stage and those in which it is requested for the execution of an enforceable judgment”. The basic idea is as follows: when a judicial authority of a Member State requests the surrender of a person, either because he has been convicted of an offence or because he is being prosecuted, its decision must be recognised and executed automatically throughout the Union. Refusal to execute a European arrest warrant must be confined to a limited number of hypotheses. The European arrest warrant is a warrant for search, arrest, detention and surrender to the judicial authority of the issuing country.

The principle of double criminal liability is abolished. It will hardly matter, therefore, if the offence for which the arrest warrant was issued does not exist, or that its components differ in the executing State. Under this principle each Member State not only recognises the entire criminal law of the other Member States but also agrees to assist them in enforcing it.

The added benefit is that a British subject may well find themselves arrested and extradited on one charge only for that charge to be dropped and then having to face other charges at the discretion of the judicial authority of the issuing country. “A person may be prosecuted, sentenced or detained for an offence other than that for which the European arrest warrant was issued.”
Europa

The Warrant also in its present form includes tought Crimes such as “xenophobia and racism” a definition of either will be for the courts to decide but which courts? If for instance opinions expressed on the internet were considered offensive these could well be considered extraditable, although Britain has negotiated a deal under which the offences will only apply when they involve incitement to violence. We have been forced to concede a review after two years at which point the directive could be extended to and not just those likely to incite violence.
So our government which is sworn to defend the rights of the British people have reneged on their duty to us, do we therefore still owe a debt of allegiance our Monarch or are we the people now in the position of having no duty to the Queen because she has allowed our government to break our contract with her.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Mixx
  • Google
  • Spurl
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati
  • Webnews.de
  • YahooMyWeb
Filed under : The Best of the Rest
By Ken
On December 27, 2004
At 10:49 am
Comments :
 

Link to This Page If you found this page useful, consider linking to it.
Simply copy and paste the code below into your web site (Ctrl+C to copy)
It will look like this: The EU arrest Warrant

Leave a Reply

*
To prove you're a person (not a spam script), type the security word shown in the picture. Click on the picture to hear an audio file of the word.
Click to hear an audio file of the anti-spam word

 
 

Bad Behavior has blocked 405 access attempts in the last 7 days.