The case concerned a European Arrest Warrant issued by the Cypriot judicial authorities for prosecution in relation to offences including armed robbery, conspiracy to commit armed robbery and attempted burglary. The Court of Appeal ordered surrender, finding that the EAW contained the information required by Italian law, that the facts were also offences under Italian law, and that no mandatory or optional grounds for refusal applied. The requested person challenged the decision, arguing that surrender should have been postponed under Article 24 of Law No. 69/2005 because he had to serve a sentence in Italy for a different offence, and that surrender should in any event have been made subject to a return guarantee under Article 19(2), given his family ties in Italy. The Italian Supreme Court declared the appeal inadmissible. It held that postponement of surrender under Article 24 is discretionary: the Court of Appeal had reasonably declined to postpone surrender because the Cypriot request concerned serious offences, including aggravated robbery and criminal association, whereas the Italian sentence concerned a less serious aggravated theft conviction. The Court also held that temporary transfer to Italy under Article 24(2) requires a request from the issuing judicial authority, which was absent. As to the return guarantee, the Court found that the requested person’s family presence in Italy was insufficient to establish genuine and stable integration, especially given that he had not regularized his stay, had no lawful employment or residence permit, retained Serbian citizenship and property in Serbia, and had criminal records relevant to the offences prosecuted in Cyprus. The surrender order was therefore upheld.

EAW and double criminality: it is sufficient that the specific conduct is punishable as a criminal offence in both legal systems, regardless of any differences not only in the penalties but also in the legal classification and in all the elements required to establish the offence. To enable the Italian judge to carry out this assessment, the law provides that the issuing State shall transmit a “report on the facts attributed to the requested person”, indicating the time of their commission; such a report may be replaced by the documentation transmitted by the issuing State, provided that it allows the Italian judicial authority to perform the review entrusted to it by law.