EU Arrest Warrant

Russell Walters' speech to the press conference
held for the joint lobby of Downing Street to
oppose the introduction of the EU arrest warrant
9th December 2002

We congratulate the Conservative Party and Liberty on this important initiative, which the Democracy Movement wholeheartedly supports.

Our concerns about the Government's proposals are twofold:

First - of course - the very substantial degradation of civil liberties in the UK that they represent.

Second, the general trend of which the EU Arrest Warrant is only an example. That is for legislation to take place at supranational level and thus be impervious to amendment by subsequent electoral majorities in the contracting states.

Even with the best will in the world, some legislation is bad. It wasn't thought through well enough, wasn't scrutinised properly, doesn't work out as intended or has unforseen negative consequences. Or perhaps the electorate later comes to feel that a different approach is more appropriate for changing times. So the legislation is amended or repealed.

However, legislation by treaty is much more inflexible, and of course less democratic. Especially if that treaty is one of those that presages every transfer of power from electorates to the institutions of the EU.

Repeal is unimaginable. Amendment is just about conceivable at the headline level after long delay, but entirely inconceiveable in detail. Such legislation has necessarily to be broad brush. The authorities have wide discretion on how it is implemented.

In that ever-widening discretion - or arbitrariness - lies the breach of the principle of the rule of law that this bill typifies.

Going back to my first point, the EU Arrest Warrant (EAW) is supposedly intended to help protect the public from a 9/11 type atrocity.

It is ironic that it will, in practice, result within the UK in the erosion of very basic and ancient legal norms and values. Norms and values that perhaps more profoundly that anything else characterise the sort of society the EU arrest warrant supposedly seeks to preserve.

But far from being a temporary measure to meet a passing emergency - as were many laws and regulations enforced during the Second World War - there is not hint that the EAW is a necessary evil to be repealed as soon as it is safe to do so.

On the contrary, it appears to be a vital component of a legal order that is intended - with its inferior standards of civil liberties - to permanently and institutionally overarch the flexible, responsive and democratically accountable legal systems of the member states.

Indeed;

- given the frighteningly broad definition of terrorism now accepted within the EU, a definition which could encompass minor civil disobedience such as witholding your TV licence fee;

- given that the EAW covers 31 non-terrorist offences as well;

- given that some of these so-called offences conflict with rights guaranteed under the European Convention on Human Rights, or as so far down the scale of misdemeanours that they are not regarded as crimes in some member states;

it is difficult to accept that 9/11 is anything more than an excuse for the implementation of measures with awesomely oppressive potential. It is surely also instructive that the United States has not thought it necessary to introduce comparable measures.

The Bill removes the need for prosecutors to furnish a prima facie case before the extradition.

It allows extraditing states to try citizens for different and additional charges to the ones for which they were deported.

And because so many neighbouring states have no equivalent of Habeas Corpus, it is possible that British citizens could be held for months or even years before being brought to trial.

We know that because it happens to their own citizens now.

As Liberty have said;

"There is an assumption that in respect of our close extradition partners, extradition can proceed rapidly because of the presence of adequate safeguards in their legal systems. Experience proves otherwise."

The really frightening thing is that there are many cases where the High Court or the Home Secretary refuse extradition to EU countries because extradition would be unjust.

For example, the man who had been tried in his absence by Italy and who would have had no right of appeal if he had been extradited there.

For example, the woman whose extradition was demanded by Portugal - even though the prosecution case had collapsed and her innocence acknowledged - because in Portugal every arrest warrant has to end in a trial.

Under this Bill, these individuals would have suffered great wrongs at the hands of the various states. And this is without positing how - in the future - governments that intend mischief might misuse the broad definitions used in the Bill.

There are politicians in government today who were highly critical on civil libertarian grounds of certain legislation passed by the last Conservative government.

It is truly saddening that so many of them, now that they occupy the ministerial limousines, are content to alter the balance of power between the individual and the state so massively in favour of the state that the term "balance" hardly seems appropriate at all.