The Verkhovna Rada has ratified the third and fourth additional protocols to the European Convention on the extradition of offenders; 227 people's deputies voted for law No. 0135 at the sitting of the parliament on Wednesday, an Interfax-Ukraine correspondent has reported.

The third additional protocol to the European Convention on the Extradition of Offenders was drawn up in Strasbourg on November 10, 2010 and the fourth one in Vienna on September 20, 2012. Both protocols are designed to complement the European Convention on the Extradition of Offenders dated 1957.

The explanatory documents to the bill say that the third additional protocol is aimed at unifying the rules for the application of simplified extradition by states. So, a detainee can give consent to his extradition without waiting for the fulfillment of all the formalities of the extradition process. In such a case, a person is kept in the requested state for the minimum time before he is extradited, as a result of which two states - the one that asks and the one that is asked for - also reduce the costs of human and financial resources.

The Fourth Protocol amends and supplements a number of provisions of the Convention in order to adapt it to the current needs of cooperation between states.

At present, the third additional protocol to the European Convention on the Extradition of Offenders is applicable to 16 States, and the fourth one applies to eight countries.