Similarities and differences of extradition and european arrest warrant

Similarities and Differences of Extradition and European Arrest Warrant. This Master thesis aims to reveal similarities and differences among extradition and European arrest warrant as they are the most significant forms of international legal assistance in criminal proceedings. The comparison of their individual aspects could be useful in the context of intensive international cooperation in criminal cases. For this reason analysis was perfomed by examining the Criminal Code of the Republic of Lithuania and separate articles devoted to extradition and European arrest warrant in the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Republic of Lithuania, also Lithuania‘s International treaties of extradition and Council Framework Decision of 13 June 2002 on the European arrest warrant and the surrender procedures between Member States (2002/584 / JHA). Four structural parts were distinguished in this Thesis in order to achieve the goal. The first part provides analysis of the core concepts of extradition and the European arrest warrant and briefly discusses their historical development. The second part reveals similarities between the two institutions by analyzing the place of a comited crime as a basis for refusal to extradite and non bis in idem principle as a refusal for handover; The third part provides comparison and analysis of fundamental differences of extradition and the European arrest warrant, highlighting the mutual criminalization principle, transferring country‘s citizens and refusal to issue for political crimes, paying attention to their debatable aspects, different scientist authors‘ opinions and cases of Lithuania and the European Union Court of Justice. The fourth part gives analysis of the procedural differences, comparing extradition and the European arrest warrant subjects of implementation and the scope of implementation, their procedures, and reviewing guarantees given by the European arrest warrant – personal non-issuance based on European arrest warrant for a judgement given in absentia execution, review of sentence under penalty to life imprisonment, and transfering citizen/ resident to the country of descent for imprisonment