The European arrest and surrender warrant: how the Euro-warrant works step by step

The European arrest and surrender warrant, popularly known as the Euro-warrant, is today the swiftest mechanism available to the justice systems of European Union countries to ensure that a person wanted by a court is located, arrested and made available to the State seeking them. Although it usually makes the headlines because of high-profile political cases, in practice it is used tens of thousands of times a year to prosecute offences of all kinds, from fraud to violent crimes.

From a legal standpoint, the Euro-warrant is a decision issued by the judicial authority of one Member State for another Member State to surrender a person, whether to put them on trial or to enforce a custodial sentence already imposed. Its regime derives from Framework Decision 2002/584/JHA of 13 June 2002, transposed into Spanish law by Law 23/2014 of 20 November on the mutual recognition of criminal judgments in the European Union. The idea underpinning it is mutual trust: each country assumes that the judicial systems of the others offer equivalent guarantees, so that a judge’s decision must be complied with without prior political review.

Not every offence allows a Euro-warrant to be issued. To prosecute a person not yet tried, the prescribed penalty must reach at least twelve months of deprivation of liberty; to enforce a sentence already final, it is enough for the penalty imposed to be four months or more. There is also a list of thirty-two categories of serious offences (terrorism, drug trafficking, human trafficking, corruption, fraud or cybercrime, among others) for which the conduct is not required to also be an offence in the country receiving the warrant, provided that it is punishable there with at least three years’ imprisonment.

The procedure begins when the competent judge of the issuing State completes the official form and transmits it, normally through the Schengen Information System. Once the person is located, the police of the executing State arrest them and, in Spain, make them available to the Central Investigating Court of the National High Court (Audiencia Nacional). From the arrest, the time limits run: if the requested person consents to the surrender, it is resolved within a few days; if they object, the decision must be taken within a maximum of sixty days, extendable by a further thirty in justified cases.

Surrender may only be refused on grounds set out in the law. Grounds for mandatory refusal are the principle of ne bis in idem (having already been tried for the same facts), being under the age of criminal responsibility, and the existence of an amnesty or pardon. Alongside these there are optional grounds, such as the facts not being an offence in the executing State (except for the thirty-two offences on the list), or that State undertaking to try its own national itself. Outside these cases, surrender is mandatory.

The requested person retains essential rights throughout the procedure: to be informed of the content of the warrant, to have a lawyer in both the executing and the issuing country, to have an interpreter, and to object by invoking the grounds for refusal. They are also protected by the rule of speciality, which prevents them from being tried in the issuing State for offences other than those that gave rise to the surrender, unless expressly authorised. Understanding these rules is decisive for anyone who may be affected by a Euro-warrant.