On 25 and 26 November 2005 the expert meeting of the participants to the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) Project of the European Criminal Bar Association (ECBA) took place at the Maastricht University.

Hosts were Taru Spronken (editor in chief of the project) and Marelle Attinger (research-assistant and website coordinator of the project).
The EAW Project of the ECBA focuses on defence rights of suspects in EAW surrender cases.

The project aims (1) to build a network of criminal defence lawyers throughout the European Union specializing in EAW surrender cases and (2) to develop a knowledge centre on basic criminal procedural law of every EU Member State and noteworthy case law concerning EAW surrender cases.
This knowledge centre will be made publicly available on the internet.

The project has received financial support from the AGIS Programme of the European Commission - Directorate General Justice, Liberty and Security and from our faculty.
The EAW Project of the ECBA is part or a larger project that is coordinated by the T.M.C. Asser Institute in The Hague (www.eurowarrant.net). The consortium partners are: the Amsterdam Centre for International Law, the ECBA, the Faculty of Law of the University of Lund, the Information Point for Members of Parliament of the National Library of Estonia, JUSTICE (London), the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law (Freiburg) and the Ministry of Justice of Romania.

In total 19 participants from 12 EU Member States were present at the expert meeting. Unfortunately, due to the bad weather conditions on Friday 25 november 2005, some participants could not reach Maastricht properly.

On 25 November the progress of the project was presented and discussed. On 26 November the contents of the knowledge centre was critically reviewed in small working groups.
It was a very fruitful event. We received a lot of positive feedback regarding the contents, the organization and the positive atmosphere.

The website www.ecba-eaw.org is available to the public.