To assist effective legal co-operation in combating criminal activity, the Justice and Home Affairs Council of the European Union has recently concluded two new conventions to simplify and improve extradition procedures between member States of the European Union. In doing so, the Council set in motion a process whereby existing arrangements for extradition were examined with a view to making them more flexible. In 1995 the Council recommended that the convention on simplified extradition be adopted in order to fulfil the aim of efficiency in the field of criminal justice. Its aim was to speed up extradition in cases where persons consented to be extradited. However, after further discussion concerning other aspects of extradition the Council eventually recommended that member States adopt far more radical procedures. The 1996 convention relating to “involuntary” extradition between member States appears to bypass several procedures designed to offer a degree of protection for the fugitive offender. Traditionally, extradition procedures have sought to offer a balance between judicial co-operation in the fight against crime and protecting the fundamental rights of the individual, and these concerns are acknowledged within the preambles to both the new EU conventions. However, the new conventions make several alterations to what can be regarded as established extradition procedures. In this article we examine these new procedures and consider whether the balance has shifted too far in favour of law enforcement at the expense of fundamental legal protections.

In May 1995 the Court of Justice published1 its initial contribution to the debate surrounding the intergovernmental conference (IGC) which officially got under

Although these last two years have been relatively quiet in terms of institutional developments, a number of important inter-institutional agreements have been negotiated in order to facilitate the working of some of the powers granted by the Maastricht Treaty, while some other powers were used for the first time: the European Ombudsman has issued his first report, the European Parliament has set up two Committees of Inquiry. Lastly, the European Court of Justice delivered an important opinion as regards the European Convention on Human Rights.

Developments in the external relations policy and law of the European Union are too numerous to describe comprehensively in this note. We have therefore identified and described what we consider to be some of the more significant issues. These are: recent moves towards enlargement, in particular the Union's pre-accession strategy; expansion of the Union's regional co-operation policies; the mid-term review of the Lomé Convention; and progress in the 1996

In November 1996 a special meeting of the contracting parties to the London Dumping Convention 1972 (LDC) adopted a new Protocol. The objective of the Protocol is to protect “the marine environment from all sources of pollution”.3 This is to be done by placing more restrictions on dumping and clarifying ambiguities in the law.

1. From “Sunday trading” to Keck and Mithouard

These Current Developments surveys have consistently been driven to consideration of the Court's attempts to fix the outer limits of Article 30 of the EC Treaty, beyond which national authorities remain exclusively competent to regulate their markets without fear of legal challenge based on Community rules governing the free movement of goods. The high-water mark of judicial interventionism came in the so-called “Sunday trading” cases where the United Kingdom was required to justify against standards recognised by Community law rules governing shop opening hours despite the fact that such rules, although inhibitive of commercial freedom, posed no demonstrable obstacle to the construction of an integrated marketing strategy for the whole territory of the Community.1 In Criminal Proceedings against Keck and Mithouard2 the Court sought to curtail the reach of Article 30. A French rule prohibiting resale at a loss was held unaffected by Article 30. The Court overruled previous decisions, probably including the pair dealing with Sunday trading, although the Court was not explicit. Its intention to refocus the law of the free movement of goods on measures hostile to market integration, rather than those merely oppressive of commercial freedom, was reflected in the formula: