EU: Extradition to be made easier
01 September 1993
An informal meeting of EC Justice Ministers meeting in Limelette, Belgium on 27-28 September instructed the Coordinators Group (senior officials from EC Interior Ministries) to draft proposals for an EC Convention on extradition. The intention is to exclude political offences as grounds for a country to refuse to extradite one of their nationals. Mr Wathelet, the Belgian Minster of Justice, said that: "The notion of political offences needs to be reconsidered and possibly abolished". The Ministers argue that as all EC states respect human rights and are democratic there are no longer any grounds for offences deemed to be political to be grounds for refusing extradition requests.
All EC countries with the exception of Belgium are already signatories to the European Convention on Extradition. This Convention abolishes a requirement that an extradition request be accompanied by sufficient supporting evidence to establish a prime facie case - allowing extradition simply on the basis of a request, an arrest warrant or a statement of facts. The UK was one of the last to sign, February 1991, as it has relied on the European Convention on the Suppression of Terrorism (1977). The Council of Europe's European Convention on Extradition explicitly excludes offences of a political nature from the list of extraditable offences. The Convention on the Suppression of Terrorism created two categories of offences where the states have to ignore the political nature of an offence (hijacking, kidnapping, the taking of hostages, the use of bombs and firearms) and a second category where states could, if they wished, ignore the political nature of an offence covering violence and people and property. The intention of the proposed Convention is to exclude all reference to "political offences".
The Ministers also agreed that the proposals would allow extradition punishable by life imprisonment in the requesting states' law even if this sentence was not provided for in the requested states' laws. At present courts in France, Belgium and Italy are unlikely to extradite nationals to stand trial in another country. Another complication is that Belgium still retains the death sentence - Ministers are considering on this and other offences the requested state agreeing to extradite providing the potential length of sentence is defined.
Other measures agreed were ones to speed up legal cooperation in criminal matters by the appointment of magistrates or other legal authorities as a contact point in each EC state to speed up the bringing of charges.
The Ministers also discussed the proposal that the EC should sign the European Convention on Human Rights but felt they could not overcome the "technical problem" that the EC was not a state and therefore would not be able to be represented in case brought against it.
Communique from the Informal meeting of Ministers of Justice, Limelette 27-28 September; State Research bulletin October- November 1977.