Breakthrough is achieved on extradition

Date: 27/06/1996

By Thomas Klau

EU governments took a significant step forward in their joint efforts to fight organised crime this week by agreeing the outline of a new European convention aimed at easing extradition procedures between member states.

After three years of difficult negotiations and sometimes acrimonious debate between justice ministers, member state officials reached a compromise on the extradition of suspects charged with participation in criminal or terrorist organisations.

As European Voice went to press, the Committee of permanent representatives (Coreper) was meeting to finalise the agreement, but officials did not expect any delegation to raise an objection.

The lack of a convention recently led to a fierce diplomatic tussle between Belgium and Spain after the Belgian Court of State rejected a Spanish request for the extradition of two suspected supporters of the Basque terrorist organisation ETA.

Under the draft agreement, fine-tuned in the wake of the Florence summit after heads of government asked ministers to come up with a final draft by the end of the month, member states will take steps to enable them to respond to all extradition requests from other EU countries - as long as the charges involve participation in a terrorist or criminal organisation.

Definitions of this offence vary widely from one member state to another and in some it does not exist at all, so each EU country will have to choose between two clearly distinct legal paths.

They will either have to agree to extradite people charged with an offence which does not exist in domestic legislation, or adapt and broaden their national law to match their partners' definition of what constitutes participation in - or membership of - a terrorist or Mafia-type gang.

The convention, which will have to be ratified by national parliaments, will generally include member states' own nationals in the extradition rule.

But member states with constitutional objections to delivering their own nationals to be dealt with under another country's legal system - especially in cases where the charges brought would not be punishable in the suspect's own country - will be granted an opt-out clause.

The exemption will not, however, be indefinite and those member states claiming it will be required to renew their claim every five years.

At the insistence of Portugal - which is bound by a ruling from its supreme court which declared life sentences for convicted criminals to be unconstitutional - member states with legal systems allowing for life sentences have agreed to give an assurance that such sentences would be reviewed after a given number of years.