On 30 March 2020, Eurojust published a new version of its country-by-country overview on the position of public prosecutors in relation to the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) (for the previous version, see eucrim 2/2019, p 110). The overview was compiled following the CJEU’s judgment of May 2019, in which it declared that the German public prosecutors’ offices do not fall within the concept of “issuing judicial authority” in the sense of Art. 6(1) FD EAW due to lack of independence (cf. eucrim 1/2019, pp. 31-33). In another judgment of May 2019 as regards the Lithuanian Prosecutor General, the CJEU set out requirements of objectivity and independence and the need for effective judicial protection that must be afforded to the requested persons if an EAW is issued by a public prosecutor’s office. The judgments raised uncertainties amongst practitioners regarding the legal position of public prosecutors in the Member States.

Alongside an updated summary of the most recent CJEU judgements taken on this issue in 2019 (see also eucrim 3/2017, p. 178, and eucrim 4/2019, p. pp. 242, 244-245), Eurojust’s update now also offers information on the UK and Norway as well as information on judicial protection and the possibility to contest a prosecutor’s decision to issue an EAW.