Summary

The surrender procedure based on the European arrest warrant replaces extradition between the Member States of the European Union as a type of international cooperation. The legal basis of the surrender procedure is the framework decision of 13 June 2012 of the Council of the European Union, which became binding for Estonian law enforcement authorities under the Code of Criminal Procedure that entered into force on 1 July 2004.

Estonia has accurately and rapidly transposed the rules of the surrender procedure into Estonian law, while at the same time failing to consider the potential room for discretion or the suitability of the rules for and consistency with domestic norms. This has caused several problems mainly in the area of the protection of a person’s rights. The article addresses such problems and proposes how to complement current rules. Furthermore, the article stresses the need to change prevailing attitudes towards the surrender procedure. If the circumstances underlying surrender are clear and its necessity does not raise questions during the surrender procedure, surrender is just a formal interim step in cross-border cooperation. However, there are problematic surrender procedures where questions have been raised about the necessity of surrender as well as the protection of the rights of a surrendered person, and in such cases courts are liable to place extra effort into assessing the facts of the case and motivating their decisions.