Letter: Justice in Europe

Sir: Your report "Proposal for Europe-wide arrest warrant" (1 July) indicates that if the proposals become law, police officers of one state will be able to arrest suspects in another member state without recourse to the courts of that state.

That seems to mean that if a British football hooligan misbehaves in Greece and a Greek court issues a warrant for his arrest, Greek officers can then come to the UK, seize the suspect, handcuff him and take him off to Greece, all without intervention by British courts or police.

If the European Union is here to stay, there must be some mechanism to enable the law to operate swiftly across national borders, but this proposal is surely open to abuse. It would certainly have a much greater impact on the lives of some British subjects than the introduction of the euro.

D S HOSKINS

Edinburgh