The United Kingdom Independence party has in today’s Telegraph set out its manifesto, including the promise to ‘reverse the opt-in to the European arrest warrant, because Britain believes in “innocent until proven guilty”’. This is an example of a completely outdated and damaging manifesto commitment based on a completely out-of-date set of myths about the Europan arrest warrant. The EAW is now a successful instrument in the European Union which certainly needed reform but has now proven to be one of the many quiet and strong successes of our membership of the EU. The Conservative home secretary recently chose to opt-in to the EAW and Labour has always backed a reformed EAW. It is one of the many justice and home affairs measures which have quietly helped the United Kingdom become a safer and stronger democracy.
In 2013, over 1,000 foreign criminals were deported under the EAW for crimes related to murder, fraud, child sex offences and rape. The truth is that these type of serious crimes and terrorist activities no longer operate within the boundaries of one country and are no longer crimes that can be tackled by one country alone. Opting out of the EAW will hamper the fight against cross-border crime.
As chair of the civil liberties, justice and home affairs committee in the European parliament, I see how widespread and interconnected threats have now become. Criminal networks are spread out across dozens of countries and only this extradition agreement can ensure that our police force can react fast and provide justice to victims of crime by ensuring criminals cannot avoid justice. When we cooperate with countries like Germany, Spain, Italy and France under one single set of rules we can make sure that the people who commit serious crimes do not get away with it simply by hiding in another country.
Before the EAW victims of crime and their families were forced to wait months, or even years when trying to extradite suspected criminals using bilateral agreements between individual countries. Now with the EAW extradition times have been drastically reduced to an average of 48 hours ensuring that any suspected criminals are dealt with in the most efficient manner possible. Not only does this help speed up processes without criminal justice system but it also avoids the emotional stress and expense on victims of crime who often have to endure lengthy criminal justice procedures both here in the UK and abroad.
It is already accepted that the EAW is not a perfect measure as there are some aspects that still need to be addressed. These include the strengthening safeguards for procedural rights for defendants and reducing pre-trial detention periods especially in poor conditions. However, these are not sufficient reasons to abandon entirely the EAW especially when we consider that work is already being done at a European level. The aim is to fix these problems and build on the existing strengths of the EAW so that we can build an even more efficient extradition system in the EU that tackles cross-border crime and holds people accountable.
Given the benefits and protection to British citizens, it is ridiculous that the EAW remains one of the main focus or ‘battlegrounds’ for Eurosceptics who continue to attack this area of cooperation. Ukip fail to mention that opting out of the EAW could pose a threat to national security as the UK would no longer be able to use agencies, shared databases, funding and instruments in law enforcement which the British police force depend on so regularly to protect UK citizens. Abandoning the EAW at this stage would be a major step back when tackling the issue of criminal activity in Europe. Ukip’s commitment to scrapping a much needed crime fighting measure just shows how far they will go to push their anti-EU political agenda, even if it means jeopardising the public safety and security of British citizens.
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Claude Moraes MEP is chair of the European parliament’s civil liberties, justice and home affairs committee. He tweets @ClaudeMoraesMEP
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