Target group
Practitioners in the fields of the judiciary (judges, prosecutors) and law enforcement (police, customs and other national forces), defence lawyers, administrators and officers from EU institutions and agencies, officials in ministries of justice and the interior and law-makers/legislators.

Description
The European Arrest Warrant (EAW) is the seminal instrument in the field of EU judicial cooperation in criminal matters. It is widely used and has proved to be an efficient tool in accelerating the execution of warrants and surrender procedures in cross border criminal cases within the EU. At the same time the EAW still poses a number of issues – mostly related to constitutional and fundamental rights protection - that Member States find difficult to accommodate in their respective legal systems. It is in this context that the seminar is willing to map out the operational success of the EAW and discuss the concerns present in the application of the EAW. 

Learning methodology
A mixture of presentations, case studies, discussions and workshops.

Objectives
The purpose of the seminar is two-fold: firstly, to provide participants with information on the use, domestic application and evaluation of the European Arrest Warrant (EAW). Emphasis will be made on how to issue an EAW, how the various grounds of refusals are understood by national judiciaries and what are the issues that defence lawyers may want to look at. The practical administration of EAWs will be complemented however with the discussion of constitutional and fundamental rights issues that posed difficulties in applying the instrument and gave rise to litigation before both the Court of Justice of the European Union and the national courts.