Italy Ends Opposition to EU Arrest Warrants

Italy dropped its objection to a common European arrest warrant Tuesday, clearing the way for European Union approval this week of an anti-terrorist tool that would end cumbersome extradition hurdles among the 15 member nations.

The new warrant, a long-range goal that gained urgency after the Sept. 11 attacks, would erode national barriers to law enforcement across the EU, just as the euro next month will replace 12 of the union’s national currencies.

Under the proposal, a suspect could be arrested anywhere in the EU on a warrant issued in any of its countries for any of 32 serious crimes, including terrorism, murder, hijacking, sabotage and hostage-taking. A suspect could not challenge the substance of the warrant; extradition, a process that now can take years, would become a formality and last no more than 60 days.

Uniform Definition, Penalties for Terrorism

European officials say the measure would help their escalated crackdown on terrorism. It would set a common definition of terrorist acts, making up for a lack of anti-terrorism legislation in eight member states.

Penalties would be standardized--at least 15 years in prison for leading a terrorist group and eight years for all forms of support for terrorism, including financing. The common definition would apply to acts or threats aimed at intimidating a population or destabilizing a country’s economy or political system.

Justice ministers of 14 countries adopted the proposal last week. But Italy’s center-right government balked, insisting that the list of crimes be reduced to six items, and set off a storm of criticism across Europe that embarrassed Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Under pressure from his European counterparts and some members of his Cabinet, Berlusconi agreed Tuesday not to thwart the proposal at the EU’s year-end summit, which begins Friday in Laeken, Belgium. Unanimous approval is required.

“I’m very happy that Italy, along with the rest of the EU members, has accepted the arrest warrant as defined by the ministers,” Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt told a joint news conference after a meeting with the Italian leader in Rome.

But Berlusconi indicated that Italy might be slow to join in. Several countries must change their laws to conform to the terms of the expected agreement, which gives them until 2004 to do so.

Need to Alter Constitution

“The countries that will have adapted their internal legislation will have a common judicial space,” Berlusconi told reporters. “We will have to change our constitution, and we will see if that is possible by 2004.”

“If we cannot manage it, then we will remain outside this pact and nothing will happen here,” he added. “Just as Britain and others have remained outside the euro, for example.”

Several other countries face internal criticism of the European warrant, but the opposition in this nation is powerful. Italy’s most vocal foe is Umberto Bossi’s Northern League, an EU-bashing nationalist party that is part of Italy’s ruling coalition.

Many critics suggest that Berlusconi, Italy’s richest person, wanted to avoid the pact to minimize his own legal troubles. He faces three trials for alleged corruption at home and is under investigation for alleged tax evasion by his holding company, Fininvest, in Spain.

The European list of 32 crimes includes corruption, fraud and other white-collar crimes, as well as racism and xenophobia.

Until Tuesday, Italian officials had argued that including such crimes would be too unwieldy for Europe’s diverging legal systems. Justice Minister Roberto Castelli said the Northern League, of which he is a member, could face prosecution for its stand against immigration. “Who decides, on a European level, who is racist and who isn’t?” he asked.

Castelli initially proposed slashing the list of crimes to terrorism, arms trafficking and four others, then introducing the other 26 in seven years.

The rest of the EU turned him down. German Interior Minister Otto Schily called the Italian position completely unacceptable. And with his own foreign minister favoring an agreement, Berlusconi had no choice but to end the standoff.

“There has been a misunderstanding,” the Italian leader said Tuesday, denying that “there was a particular and personal interest on behalf of the Italian prime minister” against a European warrant.

Use of Evidence From Other Nations Hindered

But his skirmish with the emerging judicial order in Europe has coincided with a highly personalized struggle to tame the one at home.

In October, Berlusconi’s majority in Parliament passed a law making it harder for Italian prosecutors to use evidence from other countries against criminal defendants in Italy. Then lawyers for a Berlusconi business ally, Cesare Previti, cited the new law to try to block Swiss bank evidence that their client bribed Italian judges.

Italian courts have twice ruled that the new law does not apply to evidence against Previti, prompting an all-out government attack on the judiciary. Undersecretary of Interior Carlo Taormina said judges who have investigated Berlusconi on corruption charges should be arrested and tried.

Leaders of the judiciary union resigned in protest, and Taormina was fired. But the government has vowed to overhaul the legal system by putting prosecutors under Parliament’s control.

Critics decry the move as a threat to judicial autonomy--a prized feature of Italian democracy instituted after the Mussolini dictatorship, which had used the courts to repress its opponents.