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EU: Spain & the Convention on Extradition

01 September 1996

The Justice and Home Affairs ministers of the EU signed in Dublin on 29 September the new European Convention on Extradition, which obliges any signatory state to accede to an extradition request from another member state concerning persons accused of terrorism of related offences, and which does away with the concept of a political offence. The Convention has had a somewhat difficult passage. It was unable to win approval at the European summit meeting in Florence in June because of the opposition of five EU countries (the UK, the Netherlands, Ireland, Portugal and Belgium). In July the Dutch again blocked the revised text put forward by Spain, on the grounds that it "stretched to the limits" their Penal Code. The UK also created difficulties by attempting to strengthen the provisions relating not just to trafficking, but to the possession of drugs. There had already arisen tensions between Belgium and Spain, when Belgium declined in February to extradite two alleged ETA members, and this recurred in June when the Basque political refugee Pagoaga Gallastegi was allowed to enter Belgium. There is continuing "harmonisation" in relation to the granting of extradition requests against persons sought by Spain on charges of collaborating with armed groups. In June Germany finally conceded the extradition of an alleged ETA supporter. France, meanwhile, has systematically expelled people accused by Spain. Over the last ten years it has handed over to the Spanish police 212 persons accused of working with ETA. This measure was suspended between 1988-93, while the French Socialist Party was in power. In June the French Magistrates' Union, the French Lawyers' Union and the League for Human Rights accused the French government of violating legal norms by not respecting either its own laws or the international conventions which it had ratified. They maintained that the only legal way whereby anyone could be delivered to foreign authorities was by formal extradition, and that by resorting to expulsions the French authorities were practising a disguised form of extradition.