George Hepburne-Scott
Prior to our departure by far the highest volume of extradition cases were through the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) scheme. The UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) was signed on the 24 December 2020 and came into force at 11:01pm on 31 December 2020. Among other things, the TCA created a new extradition warrant called simply the Arrest Warrant (AW).
The AW surrender arrangements are contained in Title VII of Part 3 in the TCA.
Legislatively, as incorporated into the Extradition Act 2003 (the 2003 Act) by the European Union (Future Relationship) Act 2020 (the 2020 Act), the new AW scheme is largely consistent with that operated under the EAW scheme and averted the need to fall back on the 1957 Convention on Extradition.