Germany rewrites its extradition act — what the government bill changes for requested persons

What this is about

The IRG governs how German prosecuting authorities and courts cooperate with foreign bodies: extradition, enforcement assistance, taking of evidence across borders. Its basic structure is more than forty years old. Everything added since — above all the European arrest warrant and the other mutual-recognition instruments — was inserted in stages. The result is an act in which the path from the alert to the surrender is barely traceable for those affected.

The bill therefore does not amend the act in parts; it replaces it entirely. It separates cooperation within the European Union from cooperation with third countries and with international bodies. For the first time, police mutual assistance and cooperation with special tribunals — such as those set up to prosecute war crimes — are expressly regulated. The bill also takes account of the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union, in particular on the independence of the judicial authorities issuing a European arrest warrant.

What the government promises

The federal government highlights two points that bear directly on the procedural position of the requested person: an express right to an oral hearing, and wider scope for judicial review, up to and including the Federal Court of Justice.

To appreciate what that means, one has to put current law alongside it. Under Section 30(3) IRG the Higher Regional Court may hold an oral hearing — it is a matter of discretion, not a rule. Section 31 IRG merely governs how a hearing, once ordered, is conducted: notification of the public prosecutor, the requested person and defence counsel; production of a detained requested person before the court; hearing of those present; a record of the proceedings. On whether a hearing takes place at all, the provision is silent.

The act therefore allows admissibility of extradition to be decided without the requested person ever having stood before the panel. Precisely where detention conditions in the requesting state, questions of health, or the reliability of an assurance are at issue, that is a difference one can feel.

What the legal profession criticises

The German Federal Bar (Bundesrechtsanwaltskammer) examined the bill in its opinion 39/2026 of 8 July 2026 and reaches a different conclusion. It welcomes the modernisation in principle but does not regard the rule-of-law gaps in legal protection as closed. Its objections in detail:

• The remedies against admissibility decisions of the Higher Regional Courts (Sections 84, 161 of the draft act) do not allow full review by the ordinary courts; the remedy is drawn too narrowly.
• The one-week time limit for stating grounds is not workable in complex extradition cases.
• Confining the requested person to what is in principle a single hearing in person does not match the weight of the decision; audiovisual hearings could weaken the right to be heard in person further.
• There is still no effective remedy against detention decisions: unlike under the Code of Criminal Procedure, there is no genuine appeal against detention that moves the question to a higher court.

How that new remedy is built was shown by Nicola Bier on the earlier ministerial draft: Section 161 of that draft lets the requested person apply for a fresh decision by the Higher Regional Court against the admissibility ruling, within one week of notification and with suspensive effect. The application therefore goes back to the very panel that declared the extradition admissible. That is what lies behind the Bar's charge: the matter is examined a second time, but by nobody else. The Federal Bar cites the same section number for the same subject in the government bill; whether the wording was carried over unchanged cannot be said without the text of the bill.

For the complex extradition proceedings before the Higher Regional Courts the bill also provides no mandatory defence counsel.

Assessment

Both accounts describe the same text, and both are correct; they simply apply different yardsticks. Measured against current law, a codified right to be heard is progress, because today the oral hearing lies in the panel's discretion. But the yardstick that matters is a different one: proceedings that decide on deprivation of liberty and surrender to a foreign state must stand comparison with the Code of Criminal Procedure — and there the bill falls short.

The gap that weighs most with me is the missing appeal against detention to a higher court. Extradition detention regularly lasts months, and it is reviewed by the very panel that ordered it. That no higher instance examines the detention question itself is the point at which the procedure departs most clearly from what an accused person can claim in German criminal proceedings.

For the present, none of this changes anything. Until promulgation the Higher Regional Court decides under the IRG as it stands, and Section 30(3) IRG remains discretionary; anyone who wants an oral hearing must apply for one and give reasons. When that will change is open. The bill is before parliament, and what ends up in the Federal Law Gazette may differ from what the cabinet adopted.

For pending proceedings there is nothing worth waiting for. The renumbering of the entire act will then, however, reach every assurance, every pleading and every court order that cites provisions of the current act. I am following the process closely and will adjust the material on these pages as soon as the act is promulgated.