Cyprus is aligned with the European Union’s legislation regarding the prosecution of a person within the EU boundaries, namely the 2002/584/JHA: Council Framework Decision of 13 June 2002 on the European arrest warrant (the “EAW”) and the surrender procedures between Member States. The objective set for the Decision was the Union to become an area of freedom, security and justice, which would eventually lead to abolishing extradition between Member States and replacing it by a system of surrender between judicial authorities.
Further, the introduction of a simplified system of surrender of sentenced or suspected persons for the purposes of execution or prosecution of criminal sentences makes it possible to remove the complexity and reduce the delays inherent in the present extradition procedures. Traditional cooperation relations will be replaced by a system of free movement of judicial decisions in criminal matters, covering both pre-sentence and final decisions, within an area of freedom, security and justice. The European arrest warrant is the most important measure in the field of criminal law implementing the principle of mutual recognition which the European Council referred to as the “cornerstone” of judicial cooperation.
The principle of mutual recognition is a necessary precondition for EU Member States to trust each other ‘s legal systems. It is this mutual trust that allows each Member State to recognise and enforce the decisions of the other Member States, even if they could not have been issued or would have a different content under national law. The ultimate consequence of mutual trust is that the executing State must accept foreign judgments as lawful and fully recognise their legal consequences as if it were a domestic decision.
