The new UK-EU extradition arrangements

Extradition requests to Scotland under the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) have ended. Existing from 1 January 2004 to 31 December 2020 the EAW transformed aspects of Scottish and UK extradition practice. In its stead is a new set of rules applying between the UK and the EU 27 to persons arrested after 31 December. Those new rules are set out in Title VII of Part III of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA), concluded on 24 December 2020. Notably, the terms of the TCA are such that relatively few amendments to the applicable UK law, the Extradition Act 2003 (2003 Act), were necessary. The minimum punishment requirements and the statutory bars to extradition remain unchanged. This is not to suggest that there not several significant changes to the terms of extradition between the UK and the EU 27. There are.