European Union Agrees to Cooperate with the U.S.

On April 26, European Union justice and home affairs minister approved conditions to negotiate judicial and extradition cooperation agreements with the U.S. The agreements are specially designed to promote cooperation in counter terrorism matters, provided that the U.S. respects the human rights of suspected terrorists extradited the United States. Since September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S., the EU and the U.S. have discussed ways to strengthen criminal and law enforcement cooperation. Already the EU has banned some terrorist groups and agreed on a common EU arrest warrant. The efforts to strengthen judicial cooperation and extradition will test the abilities of U.S. and the EU to bridge differences in their legal and constitutional system and specially some longstanding differences over fundamental interests (e.g., capital punishment, life imprisonment, the compliance of intelligence cooperation with EU data protection, an more generally the interaction between criminal cooperation and international human rights).