mr president i had the honour to be the rapporteur in this house when the european arrest warrant was approved in two thousand and one and two thousand and two
colleagues who were in the house at the time will recall that we urged the commission and the council to build more civil liberties safeguards into the legislation and we secured from the commission a commitment to a draft directive on the rights of defendants in criminal legal proceedings
not all of the safeguards we called for were inserted and the draft directive on defendants rights sat for many years in the council's in-tray
the results of these omissions are at the root of this debate today
in two thousand and two parliament had no powers of codecision in these matters
nonetheless we believed that on balance the arrest warrant was the right move
as many speakers have said in this debate the arrest warrant is a hugely valuable tool in the fight against cross-border crime
it has brought justice to many victims
where problems have arisen they have come from poor implementation into national law from frivolous use of the warrant for petty crimes and from unacceptable conditions of detention
all of these can must and are being dealt with
i salute the authors of the oral questions today with the exception of one who opposes all judicial cooperation for speeding up the process of improving it
