The new agreement with the EU makes it easier to extradite Norwegian criminals

A Norwegian-European arrest warrant comes into effect in two weeks. Then it will be faster and easier to extradite Norwegian citizens who have broken the law in other EU countries.

The agreement aims to make it easier and faster to extradite offenders between EU countries, and opens the way, among other things, for Norwegian citizens to be prosecuted for criminal prosecution and imprisonment to the country where the crime was committed.

The so-called Nordic-European arrest warrant was updated last summer when Mulla Krekar and five other men were convicted in Italy for terror planning. Krekar is an Iraqi citizen, but two of the convicted, a man in his 40s living in Østfold and a man in his 40s living in Buskerud, are Norwegian citizens.

Norway does not extradite its own citizens to other countries, but the agreement signed by then-Minister of Justice Knut Storberget as early as 2006 can have consequences for the two Norwegians, wrote Drammens Tidende on July 18.

– “The Nordic-European arrest warrant involves a change in the system for the handing over of offenders, and replaces the extradition system for handover between EU and Norway Member States. Within the EU, the arrest warrant has proven to be an important tool in the fight against cross-border crime,” says Justice Minister Jøran Kallmyr (FRP).