April 25/26, 2002: at their two-day Council meeting...

April 25/26, 2002: at their two-day Council meeting in Luxembourg, the EU's Justice and Home Affairs Ministers adopted a negotiating mandate for an EU-United States Judicial Assistance Accord, which allows EU countries to refuse to extradite someone if a death sentence or life imprisonment might be imposed.
The negotiating mandate for the Agreement with the US remains secret, but Presiding Spanish Justice Minister Angel Acebes admitted there are substantial anti-death penalty components in it. However, he was at pains to point out that the mandate gives the Council Presidency considerable bargaining flexibility.
He said the negotiators would report back to the Ministers after each meeting with the Americans so that the issues could be properly debated. Commissioner Antonio Vitorino welcomed the swift adoption of the mandate, commenting that it must build on existing bilateral accords, many of which have anti-death penalty and/or life imprisonment clauses. The mandate provides for an extradited person to be tried in the US, but to serve their sentence in the extraditing state, revealed Council sources.
This proviso was inserted to overcome the objections of some Member States - namely Greece, Portugal, Austria, Germany - to extraditing their own nationals. The EU will also insist that people cannot be extradited to face military tribunals, only "ordinary proceedings before ordinary US courts".
The agreement is expected to also cover freezing of criminal assets, sharing information on bank accounts, joint investigation teams and interviewing witnesses by video conference. The Member States also agreed on a general approach for harmonising penalties in national criminal law.