Poland

Regular assistance and emotional support provided to a former partner suffering from mental health issues are insufficient, absent stable de facto family ties, to establish “family life” protected under Article 8 ECHR in extradition proceedings; furthermore, only exceptionally severe interference with private or family life may justify refusal of extradition on proportionality grounds.

The case concerned a European Arrest Warrant issued by the Polish authorities for the prosecution of a Polish national accused of robbery and drug-related offences. The District Court of Amsterdam examined whether surrender would expose the requested person to a real risk of inhuman or degrading treatment under Article 3 ECHR due to detention conditions in the Polish remand regime. Referring to the CJEU’s Dorobantu judgment, the court held that a guarantee of 4 m² of personal living space in a multi-occupancy cell, excluding sanitary facilities, is not in itself sufficient to dispel concerns under Article 3 ECHR, since other material detention conditions — including the amount of time spent outside the cell — must also be assessed. The court therefore reconsidered aspects of its earlier case law and found that the information provided by the Polish authorities was insufficiently concrete to exclude a real risk of rights violations. The proceedings were reopened and additional information was requested from the issuing judicial authority concerning detention conditions.

In the context of the execution of a European Arrest Warrant, the failure of the issuing State to answer to the Court of Appeal’s request for consent to the enforcement of the sentence in Italian territory must be regarded as a refusal, since the non-transmission of the judgment and the certificate constitutes implicit confirmation of the request for surrender already made through the issuance of the warrant.

EAW: although flight risk may, by its nature, be assessed more broadly than in ordinary proceedings, it must nonetheless exist and cannot dissolve into a form of “inadmissible presumption”. It must display characteristics of concreteness as well as present relevance, and must be supported by specific reasoning grounded in concrete elements drawn from the requested person’s life. Accordingly, the Italian court cannot base pre-trial detention in custody solely on the seriousness of the alleged offence, the severity of the penalties imposed, or the fact that the arrested person—despite being domiciled in Italy and identified by means of an Italian identity card—has not provided elements capable of excluding such risk (all the more so where the offence was committed many years earlier).

As long as the European Arrest Warrant has not been suspended, pursuant to Article 7(2) TEU, in respect of the Member State concerned, the possibility of refusing surrender on the basis of systemic deficiencies affecting the independence of the judiciary in the issuing State must be acknowledged—having regard to the judgment of the Court of Justice (Grand Chamber) of 22 February 2022, joined cases C-562/21 and C-563/21—only where the executing judicial authority establishes, on the basis of the submissions made by the requested person, that there are serious and substantiated grounds for believing that, following surrender, the person would face a real risk of a breach of their fundamental right to be tried by an independent tribunal, as guaranteed by Articles 6 ECHR and 47 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.

The case concerned an extradition request submitted by Poland against a Polish national sought for prosecution for intentional homicide. Polish judicial authorities initiated a murder investigation concerning the death of M. H. and issued international search measures for extradition purposes.The Antalya Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office initiated extradition proceedings following communications from the Turkish Ministry of Justice.The Antalya 10th Heavy Penal Court found the extradition request admissible under Article 18 of Law No. 6706.The defence appealed, arguing inter alia that:- the investigation was incomplete;- defence rights had been restricted;- the judgment was procedurally unlawful.The Turkish Court of Cassation rejected these objections. The Court held that:- the requested person and the internationally sought person were clearly identified as the same individual;- the alleged offence constituted an offence under Turkish criminal law;- the offence was neither political nor military in nature;- the alleged offence had been committed in Poland and therefore did not fall within Turkish territorial jurisdiction;- the prosecution was not time-barred under Polish law;- no evidence existed indicating discriminatory prosecution, torture, or ill-treatment risks.The Court additionally noted that:- the requested person had refused consent-based extradition procedures.The extradition admissibility judgment was therefore upheld and the release request rejected.

The proceedings sentencing the requested individual were not adversarial. The requested individual was present at the first hearing regarding his case and was notified of the adjournment to the hearing at which the judgment was delivered. He did not attend the latter, was not represented by a lawyer, did not receive personal service of the judgment and has no further means of appeal.The extradition request is rejected on optional grounds for refusal.

The proceedings sentencing the requested individual were not adversarial. The requested individual was present at the first hearing regarding his case and was notified of the adjournment to the hearing at which the judgment was delivered. He did not attend the latter, was not represented by a lawyer, did not receive personal service of the judgment and has no further means of appeal.The extradition request is rejected on optional grounds for refusal.

In matters of a European arrest warrant, the ground for refusing surrender cannot be based on the “clear risk of a breach of the rule of law” identified in the issuing State, since—so long as the European arrest warrant has not been suspended pursuant to Article 7(2) TEU in respect of that Member State—the possibility of refusing surrender must be recognised only in “exceptional circumstances”, in which the executing judicial authority, following a concrete assessment of the specific case, finds that there are serious and substantiated grounds for believing that the requested person would, after surrender, face a real risk of a violation of his or her fundamental rights. (Case concerning the risk to the rule of law identified by the European Parliament Resolution of 17 September 2020 regarding the lack of judicial independence in Poland).

Extradition may be refused where surrender would give rise to a real risk of violations of fundamental rights under the ECHR, including where the requested person may have already effectively served the sentence underlying the request or where surrender would entail a disproportionate interference with personal liberty; issues may also arise under Article 7 ECHR where extradition relies on the retroactive application of subsequent treaty frameworks to offences arguably time-barred under the previous legal regime. Furthermore, a cassation appeal is admissible only in the presence of a manifest and serious violation of law and does not extend to a reassessment of facts or evidence.