Germany

The Italian Court of Appeal ordered the surrender of the requested person to Germany pursuant to a prosecution European Arrest Warrant concerning aggravated theft offences. The appellant argued, inter alia, that the pending challenge against the rejection of his application for international protection triggered the principle of non-refoulement, that his social and occupational ties in Italy justified execution of any future sentence in Italy, and that double criminality had not been adequately established. The Supreme Court held that non-refoulement protection based on refugee status did not prevent surrender because refugee status and subsidiary protection had both been expressly denied, notwithstanding the fact that the refusal was under appeal; it also found that the five-year residence requirement under Italian EAW law was not met. The Court further reiterated that double criminality does not require identical criminal offences in the two legal systems, but only that the conduct be punishable in both, and declared the appeal inadmissible.

Germany issued a European Arrest Warrant against a Ukrainian national for 41 offences of fraud, computer-related crime, and participation in a criminal organisation, in connection with a large-scale "cybertrading" call-centre fraud scheme run out of Kyiv, targeting mainly German-speaking investors through fake trading platforms, false profit charts, and social-engineering "retention agents," causing at least €83,701.22 in proven damage attributable to the requested person acting under aliases. The requested person did not consent to surrender and, invoking his Ukrainian nationality and pending temporary-protection application under Spanish asylum law (Art. 57 LOEX), his marriage to a Spanish-resident partner, and a rental contract, argued insufficient identification, incomplete evidence linking him to the offences, and risk that Germany might subsequently deport him to Ukraine without adequate guarantees. As the offences fell within the catalogue of Art. 20 of Law 23/2014 (transposing the Framework Decision on the EAW), the court held that no double-criminality review was required. Weighing the evidence of only recent, minimal residence in Spain (registered since October 2024, no employment, no social-security registration), the court found no sufficient roots ("arraigo") to justify conditioning surrender on his eventual return to serve any sentence in Spain (Art. 55.2, Law 23/2014), and found no mandatory or optional ground for refusal under Arts. 32, 33, 48 and 49 of Law 23/2014. Surrender to Germany was ordered, subject to the speciality principle, as the requested person had not waived it.