In addition to the role of the Amsterdam court, the research set out to study the influence of Eurojust as the EJN as coordinating institutions for the EAW network, through in-depth interviews with Eurojust employees. Chapter two mentioned that Eurojust was an institution set up in 2002 to facilitate the mutual legal assistance initiatives that were being set up at the time, including the EAW instrument. As a centralized actor it was furthermore suggested that it could perform the role of an NAO – a centralized network actor taking over coordination tasks for relatively complicated networks. Eurojust shares its coordinating function with the EJN, a network of contact points in the EU designed to facilitate cooperation, the exchange of information and foster mutual trust between Member State authorities. The differences between the tasks of the EJN and Eurojust was elaborated upon greatly by both interview participants, who noted that the primary role of Eurojust is to act in cases which have greater legal complexity and which cannot be effectively resolved by the Member States and the EJN. It is in particular suited to such tasks due to a large internal legal department and the presence of representatives from the Member States through the College of Eurojust and the various national desks. The EJN, on the other hand, is utilized by practitioners as a portal to contact points in order to reach the appropriate authorities or other information in counterpart Member States.
As Eurojust focuses on the coordination and facilitation of particularly complicated cases that the Member States are having difficulty with resolving themselves, the organization does not consistently fulfill the function of network coordinator, but acts as a specialized problem-solver and facilitator. For this reason the NAO concept does not seem adequate to fully describe the function of Eurojust within the EAW network. The interviews provide some indication that Eurojust’s specialized function is also reflected in the limited effects it has on the larger EAW network. The employees noted that while Eurojust has been
102 successful in coordinating and helping to solve specific EAW cases, they could not say Eurojust also had a lasting effect on the general pattern of cooperation between Member States.
Both Eurojust employees were positive on the organization’s performance with regard to the facilitation and coordination of specific cases, however. When a case encounters practical or legal difficulties and the assistance of Eurojust is requested, the national desks are quickly able to liaison with each other internally on the issue. The employees were furthermore of the opinion that cooperation between the various national desks performed well. In this regard, a large advantage of Eurojust according to the employees is that all national desks are located within the same building. This allows for informal and quick exchanges of information on the issue and facilitates a solution to the problem. Furthermore, the continued cooperation between national desk members does facilitate trust and working relations within Eurojust itself, often making it easier for Eurojust to solve a problem than it is for normal Member State prosecutors, which are faced with long distances, short-term contacts and impersonal interactions. The employees specifically noted that working together with prosecutors from other states grants an insight in and understanding of the differences between the Member States. This insight also offers a greater understanding to Eurojust employees as to why a specific EAW case has encountered a problem in a specific Member State. Such an understanding fosters a compassionate role on part of the various national desk members towards one another, leading to a more problem-solving culture.
The EJN is was also set up in order to decrease the complexity of the network for other member organizations. Instead of the classic centralized NAO model, it can be conceptualized better as a smaller network designed to facilitate communication for the larger EAW network. As a system incorporating more than 400 contact points, it is designed to be easily accessible to judicial authorities from the broader EAW network that are looking for help in a specific area or on a specific topic. With a database of contact persons which lists their specialty, region and spoken languages, prosecutors should in theory be able to quickly access the necessary information. The existence of easily accessible EJN access points in the various EU countries should therefore help build mutual trust and a mutual understanding of national legal systems between Member State authorities. Nevertheless, the coordinating function provided by the contact points is not perfect. The interviewed Eurojust employees note that the quality of EJN contact points can differ substantially between regions and Member States. For instance, while the EJN network database notes the languages that a contact point should be able to communicate in, in practice the language skills of the contact point turn out to be less extensive. In this context, the Eurojust employees have noted that further training opportunities for EJN personnel and other judicial authorities could provide a boost to the quality of the system. While this research was too limited to provide conclusive support for this claim, the role of the EJN as a facilitating network within the larger EAW network and the methods available to improve its role fulfillment would be interesting topics for further research to consider.
With regard to the coordination of the EAW instrument in general, the employees emphasized that a lack of an overview with the relevant and latest core national jurisprudence and sent EAW’s was still a problem. Introducing such a system would allow for a quicker access to information and potentially reduce the problems occurring if information is not or inadequately transmitted by Member State authorities. Another issue is that Article 17(7) of the EAW Framework Decision obliges national authorities to inform Eurojust if it cannot meet the time limits of the Article and to give reasons for these breaches. Eurojust, however, does not entirely know what is expected of it with regard to the data it accumulates. This negates the efficacy of Article 17(7) EAW Framework Decision, as the provision clearly intends to establish
103 a control mechanism of some sort, but the data is not adequately processed and transmitted to a relevant set of actors.
6.16 Conclusions
This chapter examined both the dataset of 116 coded Amsterdam court EAW cases as well as the interview conducted at Eurojust. Both data resources indicated that, on the whole, the EAW system performs well within the Dutch context. The dataset indicated that the Amsterdam court in general applies an appropriate balance between the requirement of automatic surrender and the goal of appropriate judicial protection, even if its median and average turnover speed falls somewhat short of the time-limits enshrined in the EAW Framework Decision. Nevertheless, some specific attention points were detected, such as the double criminality abolition for list offences which is reintroduced by the Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons and the relatively high rate of refusals for execution of sentence cases. The comparisons between the various surrender relationships towards other Member States showed that while differences exist with regard to for instance turnover times, the types of warrants issued by counterpart states and whether the cases were postponed or not, there was no substantial indication that the eventual ratio between surrenders and refusals was also affected. Nevertheless, some concerns for the future stability of the ratio of surrenders vs refusals were noted, such as the higher rate of execution cases which, as mentioned, are refused more often by the Amsterdam court. The next chapter, which will contain conclusions and recommendations, will build on these observations by providing potential solutions for the specific problems that were observed in the data-analysis. Furthermore, the interview with Eurojust shed light on the facilitating roles it and the EJN perform within the context of the EAW. It was noted that while the EJN does facilitate exchanges of information, it is too decentralized for a governing role. Conversely, Eurojust is too specialized in complicated legal issues to perform a coordinating function for the entire network. Thus, real NAO for the EAW network exists, even if both Eurojust and the EJN do perform very useful tasks with regard to the facilitation of mutual recognition. The next chapter will make some suggestions on how to improve the coordination of the EAW network.
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