Spain adapts its legislation to Exchange judgments with Europe.

11 Feb Spain adapts its legislation to Exchange judgments with Europe.

Council of Ministers, on a proposal from the Minister of Justice, Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, has today approved three draft legislations to adapt Spanish legislation with European legislation in order to be able to exchange information on criminal records and criminal judgments in the field of the European Union.

The first draft legislation adopted will allow the authorities of different States to exchange information on criminal records. In Spain the Central Register of Convicted persons will be the competent authority to send and receive information on criminal records through the European information system of criminal background (ECRIS).

The second draft law approved is that of mutual recognition of criminal judgments in the European Union, and is linked to amending the existing law of the Judicial power to set which courts should handle this recognition (Courts on criminal matters, penitentiary surveillance courts and the pre-trial courts). Both legal texts represent the unification in the Spanish law of the various norms that the EU has been dictating since 2002, when the European arrest warrant was established and delivered.

European warrants to be recognized among the various States include that of compliance with penalties or custodial measures that will allow a condemnatory judgment given in a Member State to be executed in another. This will enable foreign prisoners can be sent to their country of origin and, conversely, that the Spaniards convicted in other States can comply with conviction in our country.