The approval of the European arrest warrant is an important step towards the
creation of the European judicial área. It is the first significant instrument adopted
on the basis of the principie of mutual recognition. While every day new difficulties
arise in the process of harmonisation of substantive criminal law in the Union (for
example, the endless debates on fixing penalties), applying the principie of mutual
recognition to the European arrest warrant has made it possible (undoubtedly under
considerable political pressure) to achieve genuine progress in realising the área of
freedom, security and justice.
The European arrest warrant must replace the mechanisms for extradition between
the Member States that are currently in forcé. The scope of the European arrest
warrant covers all the situations that were previously provided for under the 1957
European Convention on Extradition. The Framework Decisión will replace the complex
legal corpus consisting until now of the European Convention on Extradition
and its two protocols, Chapter IV of Title III of the Convention Implementing the
Schengen Agreement, and the two European Union Conventions on Extradition of
1995 and 1996. In this respect it will be a valuable and, hopefully, effective tool
for the experts.
With a view tó the subsequent work of implementing and evaluating the Framework
Decisión, this note aims to give an initial overview of the key provisions of
the text, compare the text adopted with the Commission's initial proposals and, above
all, highlight the questions which remain to be addressed and on which there will
have to be more work as the process advances
