Implementation of the European Arrest Warrant

Abstract

The paper analyses the European Arrest Warrant which is based on the principle of mutual recognition and the principle of effective cooperation, which represent the foundations of judicial cooperation in criminal legal matters. The authors analyse whether there are obstacles to mutual recognition of decisions and how effective cooperation is when it comes to the European Arrest Warrant. The paper includes the conducted research regarding appeals against the European Arrest Warrant addressed to the Supreme Court and the High Criminal Court of the Republic of Croatia. The aim is to use a random sample to determine which criminal offenses are most often the subject of the European Arrest Warrant, as well as the number of rejections or acceptance of appeals against the European Arrest Warrant. In particular, by using the case study method, cases were analysed in which the appeal was accepted, i.e., to determine the shortcomings of the first instance courts in making decisions. According to the available data, an analysis was performed on the number of issued and executed warrants for individual countries from 2014 to 2018, which shows the functionality of the implementation.