Listening carefully, one might have heard the sigh of relief breathed in Brussels and other EU capitals on 3 May 2007, when the Court of Justice of the European Communities (ECJ or Court) eventually delivered its first judgment on the European arrest warrant (EAW), giving the green light to this flagship instrument of EU judicial co-operation in criminal matters. However, what came as a relief for executive-branch officials, quite likely disappointed some of Europe's judges and legislators, as well as many academics and independent observers. For them, it must have seemed as if a long, tension-filled story had come to a bitter end.
