The case concerned a European Arrest Warrant issued by the District Court of Munich, at the request of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office in Munich, for the prosecution of offences relating to an alleged transnational VAT fraud scheme involving missing trader companies. The Court of Appeal of Milan ordered surrender, subject to the condition that, in the event of conviction, the requested person be returned to Italy to serve any custodial sentence. The requested person challenged the decision, arguing that surrender should have been refused because an EPPO proceeding concerning the same facts was already pending before the Naples office, creating a risk of parallel proceedings and ne bis in idem. The Italian Supreme Court rejected the appeal. It held that the optional territoriality refusal ground requires a current and concrete conflict of jurisdiction, not merely a potential overlap. In any event, where the EAW is issued within EPPO proceedings, coordination issues between delegated European prosecutors operating in different Member States must be resolved within the EPPO framework and do not fall to the Italian executing court. The Italian court must only verify that the EAW comes from a judicial authority of another Member State and satisfies the statutory requirements. In the present case, the Naples EPPO office had clarified that its investigation concerned only the year 2016 and was at an initial stage, while the German EAW covered a broader factual context from January 2016 to July 2024, involving more transactions and companies. Any possible overlap was therefore limited and insufficient to justify refusal, especially since the Italian authority had not expressed an intention to exercise its punitive power over the facts covered by the EAW. The Court also rejected the objection that the EAW was too generic, holding that it adequately described the associative context, the requested person’s role, the timeframe, the applicable offences and penalties. The appeal was dismissed and the surrender order upheld.

The case concerned a German request for extradition from Italy for prosecution in relation to drug-trafficking offences allegedly committed before 7 August 2002. Although the German authorities relied on a European Arrest Warrant, the Court of Appeal of Bologna held that the ordinary extradition regime applied because the facts pre-dated the temporal scope of the Italian EAW legislation. The defence objected that a previous German request concerning the same person, the same facts and the same underlying arrest warrant had already been the subject of extradition proceedings, which had ended after Germany withdrew the request. The Court accepted that objection. Relying on Article 707 of the Italian Code of Criminal Procedure and on Supreme Court case law, it held that a previous judgment contrary to extradition precludes a later favourable decision on a renewed request by the same State for the same historical facts, unless the new request is based on elements not previously assessed. The Court found that the renewed German request was based on the same facts and the same charges, was filed more than five years after the earlier proceedings and more than twenty years after the alleged conduct, and did not rely on any new factual elements. The previous withdrawal therefore produced a preclusive effect preventing a new favourable extradition judgment. The Court refused the request and revoked the coercive measure in place.