Resumen de Independence of Public Prosecutors’ Offices: recent case law of the CJEU on the European arrest warrant and its impact on the EU Criminal Justice System
The independence of the judiciary has been a recurrent issue in the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union in recent years. In particular, in 2019 and 2020, in a series of new cases concerning the status of national public prosecutors, the Court examined the level of independence necessary for public prosecutors to fall within the concept of an “issuing judicial authority” within the meaning of Article 6(1) of the Framework Decision on the European Arrest Warrant. After an exposition of these cases, this article seeks to investigate the impact of this case law on the EU criminal justice system. Crucially, it is argued that the new case law is likely to change the EAW dynamics that the Member States, especially those that have conferred upon their public prosecutors’ offices the power to issue EAWs, have been relying on so far and, as a consequence, the EU criminal justice system as a whole. This new framework gives rise to several practical difficulties for the executing judicial authorities that may entail, inter alia, a longer deprivation of liberty of the requested persons. A deeper reflection on this outcome is therefore also needed at the legislative level.
