📜 EU FOI Request: Member States notifying refusal to execute EAW to the UK
This post outlines the Request for Access/Freedom of Information request made to the Council of the European Union regarding Germany's, Slovenia's and Austria's notification of intent activating the third paragraph of Article 185 of the Withdrawal Agreement.
⚖️ Article 185(3)
When making the written notification referred to in the first paragraph, the Union, in respect of any Member State which has raised reasons related to fundamental principles of national law of that Member State, may declare that, during the transition period, in addition to the grounds for non‐execution of a European arrest warrant referred to in Framework Decision 2002/584/JHA, the executing judicial authorities of that Member State may refuse to surrender its nationals to the United Kingdom pursuant to a European arrest warrant. In such a case, the United Kingdom may declare, no later than 1 month after the receipt of the Union's declaration, that its executing judicial authorities may refuse to surrender its nationals to that Member State.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:12019W/TXT(02)&from=EN#d1e8608-1-1
To the best of my knowledge the European Council only received three such notifications, from Germany, Austria and Slovenia, all due to incompatibility with national law:
All three documents were marked as LIMITE, requiring permission from the General Secretariat of the Council of the European Union before publication.
🧾 Procedure of Request a document
The request was done via the electronic form, requesting access to:
📅 Timeline
- Request made on: 26 January 2020
- Registered on: 27 January 2020
- Deadline extended: 17 February 2020
- Documents delivered: 24 February 2020
The reasoning for the extension was made as follow:
The General Secretariat is still conducting consultations necessary to the examination of your request. Therefore, we have to extend the deadline to reply to your request by 15 working days, until 09.03.2020.
📥 Download the letters
Please note XT 21006 2020 REV 1 is only available in German. The other two documents are in English.
Per Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 of the European Parliament and of the Council regarding public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents (OJ L 145, 31.5.2001, p. 43) and the specific provisions concerning public access to Council documents set out in Annex II to the Council's Rules of Procedure (Council Decision No 2009/937/EU, OJ L 325, 11.12.2009, p. 35), the General Secretariat of the Council has examined the request on the basis of the aforementioned rules and decided to publicly release the 3 requested documents which are enclosed below.
The decision - for these specific three documents - thereby invalidates paragraph (1) of the Council of the European Union's Information Note (5847/06, p. 1) "Handling of documents marked LIMITE", allowing digital distribution to the general public.
Credits and Notes
These documents will be hosted and available for as long as this digital system is operational. No guarantees will be given of long-term availability or uptime. If these documents are needed in the future, please download and store them securely yourself.
I would like to give credit to tldrnelson#8154 for originally bringing up this issue and of the three Member States decision to opt-out, leading up to this request.