Assessing mutual trust among EU members: evidence from the European Arrest Warrant

ABSTRACT

International cooperation on criminal justice requires mutual trust: a belief that the partner's legal system functions adequately and adheres to fundamental norms. The European Union builds its judicial-cooperation efforts on a presumption of mutual trust: EU members are assumed to trust each other's justice system since they share a commitment to human rights and the rule of law. Skeptics argue, however, that such trust does not really exist given the wide variation in legal standards and practices across Europe. Yet such skepticism has not been supported by systematic evidence. This article seeks to offer such evidence and to quantify the impact of the lack of mutual trust. It does so by examining the record of British and Irish participation in the European Arrest Warrant: a fast-track process of surrender of fugitives between Member States. We find that judicial authorities in Britain and Ireland deviate from the mutual-trust presumption: they accord a more favorable treatment to Member States with a stronger rule of law or a better human-rights record – and this considerably affects the rate of surrenders. This finding offers important implications for the EU's justice policy and for understanding cooperation against crime more broadly.

KEYWORDS:

• Britain
• European Arrest Warrant
• extradition
• human rights
• Ireland
• trust

Acknowledgements

I thank two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments. Guy Freedman provided research assistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributor

Asif Efrat is an Associate Professor of Government at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya, Israel.

Notes

1. http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32001Y0115%2802%29

2. http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32009G1204(01), preamble, recital 8.

3. http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:C:2010:115:0001:0038:en:PDF, Arts. 1.2.1, 2.4, 3.2.

4. http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A32014L0041, preamble, recital 19.

5. Council Framework Decision of 13 June 2002 on the European arrest warrant and the surrender procedures between Member States (2002/584/JHA), Arts. 11, 13-17, 23 [hereafter EAW Framework Decision].

6. See Article 5(3) of the EAW Framework Decision.

7. EAW Framework Decision, preamble, recitals 10, 12, and 13; Article 1(3).

8. EAW Framework Decision, preamble, recital 10.

9. https://worldjusticeproject.org/

10. Source: Eurostat. This variable is logged.

11. Data on non-British population in the UK are from the Office for National Statistics. This variable is logged.

12. Source: World Bank's World Development Indicators. This variable is logged.

13. (export to UK+import from UK)/GDP. Trade data are from the Office for National Statistics. This variable is logged.

14. Source: Central Statistics Office.