European arrest warrants work. But Theresa May wants to opt out

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/23/european-arrest-warrants-theresa-may

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In 2008, Robbie Hughes, a semi-professional footballer, was beaten about the head with a bottle outside a nightclub by four men in Malia, Greece, and left for dead.

Four and a half years later, Hughes, now 31, still hasn't recovered completely. He doesn't recognise his family or remember anything about his life before the attack.

Maggie, his mother, fought to get the assailants to face justice in Greece, and thanks to an European arrest warrant (EAW) issued to five of them, they were tried in a Greek court, where four were convicted of grievous bodily harm in November last year. They have avoided jail, but the family is satisfied with the convictions they have secured.

There must be few things in this world that awaken a bigger sense of outrage and impotence than a miscarriage of justice. Equally, unimaginable pain can be caused to a grieving family, or the victim of a crime, when the perpetrators walk free or avoid facing justice.

When it comes to the EAW, a balance is needed between the rights of the victims of cross-border crime and the defendants. The UK government's intention to opt out of more than 130 measures of EU police and justice co-operation would mean that the possibility of getting that balance right would be thrown out the window.

Last December, the UK government was due to implement a measure designed to protect rights of defendants subject to the EAW, the European supervision order. It would allow defendants to be bailed back to their countries of origin whilst awaiting trial.

They decided not to implement the measure, pending a final decision on the opt-out to be made by June 2014, thus denying this safeguard to its own citizens possibly for a year and a half.

More can be done by all member states to improve the EAW. The UK should lead the way to reform and in raising standards across Europe. But the answer is not to abandon it.

Theresa May, the home secretary, announced last year her intention to opt out of these measures, and to opt back into some of the "relevant" ones. This is an unnecessary step, likely to be costly to the UK, and could leave us facing negotiations on the new arrangements with 26 member states.

If the UK returns to a system of bilateral arrangements with EU countries, we may find ourselves once again exporting criminals to Spain, like we did before the EAW came into force, because of irreconcilable differences between our criminal justice systems.

Crimestoppers, the charity founded by Lord Ashcroft, relies heavily on the EAW as a tool to bring wanted criminals who have fled abroad, mainly to Spain, back to Britain. Since the EAW, 49 out of 65 of the most wanted criminals in Spain have been returned to the UK to face justice. These include those accused of murder, robbery and rape. The Association of Chief Police Officers, the Law Society, former police chiefs, academics and even NGOs such as Justice all believe, for their own separate reasons, that exercising the opt-out could put British citizens at risk.

The government's own review into the EAW, the Scott Baker Review , reached the conclusion that the EAW was effective; that its operation could be improved; but that it should not be abandoned.

The opt-out seems to have nothing to do with the effectiveness of the measures.

A common misleading argument from Eurosceptics is that the EU is walking towards a pan-European code of criminal law. This is not the case. The EU has been pursuing, since 1999, a policy of mutual recognition between member states, which allows each one of them to fight cross-border crime using their own separate criminal justice systems.

Similarly, the Eurosceptics argue that we have much to fear from the jurisdiction of the new European court of justice, the CJEU, which will come into force in 2014.

If anything, being subject to the jurisdiction of the new court will provide better protection to the UK and its citizens, while allowing us to maintain the features of our criminal justice system. It will strengthen implementation and enforcement of police and justice co-operation across the European Union. All decisions of the court so far in the area of justice and home affairs have shown respect for the separate criminal justice systems of the member states.

Governments sometimes have to make difficult decisions, and those decisions may come at a cost to the ordinary citizen. But they should never be decisions that are taken lightly, fuelled by ideology, or that put party political interests above the safety of their own citizens.