The Italian courts ordered the surrender of the requested person to Romania under an European Arrest Warrant for the execution of a final sentence of nineteen years and four months’ imprisonment. The appellant argued that detention in Romania would expose him to inhuman or degrading treatment because of inadequate personal space and prison conditions and that his cardiac conditions created a concrete risk of serious deterioration of his health. The Supreme Court held that the Romanian authorities had provided sufficiently individualized information showing that the requested person would have at least three square metres of personal space, adequate structural and sanitary conditions, daily outdoor exercise and access to appropriate medical care, including prison hospitals and external healthcare facilities where necessary. The appeal was therefore dismissed, as the information obtained excluded a real risk contrary to Article 3 ECHR and Article 4 of the Charter.

The case concerned a Romanian execution European Arrest Warrant issued for the enforcement of a two-year prison sentence for continued theft, committed and attempted. The requested person opposed surrender, arguing that Romanian detention conditions would expose him to inhuman or degrading treatment because the guaranteed personal space in semi-open detention would be three square metres including furniture, and that surrender should be postponed due to pending criminal proceedings in Italy. The Italian Supreme Court rejected the appeal. It held that the assessment of detention conditions must be concrete and overall, taking into account not only the metric calculation of personal space but also compensatory factors such as the duration of the detention regime, freedom of movement outside the cell, access to activities and the general dignity of prison conditions. In the case at hand, the information supplied by the Romanian authorities identified the likely prison, the applicable detention regimes, a minimum space of three to four square metres, open cells, access to common areas and adequate hygiene, lighting, ventilation, heating and sanitary conditions; these elements were sufficient to exclude a real risk under Article 3 ECHR. The Court also held that postponement of surrender under Article 24 of Law No. 69/2005 is discretionary and cannot be challenged in cassation merely on grounds of reasoning where the requested person had not specifically sought postponement and the Court of Appeal had considered the absence of precautionary measures in the Italian proceedings.

The requested person challenged his surrender to Romania under a prosecutorial European Arrest Warrant for attempted murder, relying on prison conditions in Romania and his alleged stable integration in Italy. The Italian Supreme Court held that, following the 2021 reform, cassation review in EAW proceedings is limited to violations of law and does not extend to alleged contradictions or illogicality in the reasoning of the Court of Appeal. It found that the executing court had obtained individualised information concerning the destination prison and available cell space and had excluded a real risk of inhuman or degrading treatment; the Supreme Court could not reassess the logical soundness of that evaluation. The complaint concerning stable integration likewise challenged the merits of the lower court’s assessment and was therefore inadmissible.

The requested person challenged his surrender to Romania for the execution of a final sentence for aggravated theft, arguing that the available personal space in the proposed detention cell would be below three square metres. The Italian Supreme Court held that fixed furnishings must be deducted when calculating usable cell space, but that a shortfall below the three-square-metre threshold does not automatically require refusal where adequate compensating factors are present. It found that detention in a semi-open regime, with confinement to the cell essentially limited to night-time and access to wider common areas and activities during the day, sufficiently offset the reduced cell space. The Court therefore concluded that the overall detention conditions did not expose the requested person to a real risk of inhuman or degrading treatment and upheld surrender.

The requested person challenged his surrender to Romania for the execution of a four-year sentence for participation in a criminal organisation involved in drug trafficking, alleging a risk of inhuman or degrading detention conditions. The Italian Supreme Court held that mutual trust between Member States may be rebutted only by reliable, specific and up-to-date material showing a real and individualised risk to the requested person. It found that the reports relied upon were either outdated or concerned categories of prisoners not relevant to the case, while no concrete personal circumstances capable of establishing such a risk had been alleged. The executing court was therefore not required to seek supplementary information from the Romanian authorities, and surrender was upheld.

The case concerned a prosecution European Arrest Warrant issued by Romania for human trafficking, corresponding in Italy to offences relating to the induction and exploitation of prostitution. The requested person challenged the surrender order on three grounds: the alleged lack of reasoning in the domestic Romanian coercive measure, the alleged commission of the offence in Italy, and the risk of inhuman or degrading detention conditions due to his Roma ethnicity. The Italian Supreme Court declared the appeal inadmissible. It held that, in a prosecution EAW, the issuing judicial authority is not required to state the reasons justifying the internal coercive measure, and the executing authority does not review the necessity of the requested person’s presence in the issuing State, except where the warrant is issued exclusively for investigative purposes. The Court also rejected the territoriality argument, recalling that refusal on that ground requires an objective indication that the Italian State is actually asserting jurisdiction, such as pending investigations for the same facts, which was not shown in the case. Finally, the Court found the detention-risk complaint generic: the defence had merely referred to a report concerning the situation of Roma persons in Romania, without demonstrating concrete and current systemic deficiencies capable of exposing the requested person to inhuman or degrading treatment. The surrender order was therefore upheld.

EAW and risk of inhuman treatment: if the lawyer of the sought person files reliable and specific sources concerning shortcomings in the current prison system of the requesting State (Romania), it becomes necessary to assess the individualised detention conditions and such an assessment cannot be excluded ab initio. Indeed, notwithstanding a trend of progressive improvement, international authorities continue to report widespread deficiencies in the Romanian penitentiary system.

EAW execution cannot lead to inhuman or degrading treatment. The Court emphasized that when concrete risks of Article 3 ECHR violations exist, executing authorities must assess whether there is real danger of such treatment based on objective, reliable, precise and updated information. The Court noted that recent case law has recognized Romania's overcoming of structural prison system deficiencies through comprehensive initiatives and a 2020-2025 action plan, following the ECtHR pilot judgment in Rezmives v. Romania (2017). The Venice Court of Appeal had properly applied these principles by obtaining updated specific information from Romanian authorities about detention conditions. The Supreme Court rejected the appeal, finding that Romanian authorities provided adequate individualized information about detention conditions in Bucharest-Rahova prison (3 sqm minimum individual space with compensatory factors) and Baia Mare prison (4 sqm in semi-open regime with extensive freedom of movement). The Court noted that Romania had addressed previous structural deficiencies through massive interventions following the Rezmives judgment, and that the 2025 People's Advocate report did not specifically relate to the prisons where the appellant would be detained.

As regards the detention conditions in Romania, the Romanian authorities submitted to the Secretariat of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe — which is responsible for supervising the execution of ECtHR judgments — the Action Plan for the five-year period 2020–2025. In that official document, the measures aimed at addressing the issues identified by the ECtHR were set out, through the introduction of administrative and legislative remedies, both preventive (reduction in the use of pre-trial detention, construction of new prison facilities, and upgrading of existing institutions) and compensatory (the possibility of obtaining sentence reductions in the event of detention in inadequate conditions). The Italian Supreme Court considered those measures capable of overcoming the structural shortcomings that had been identified, holding that, in light of the principle of mutual trust among Member States of the European Union, it must be presumed that detention conditions in Romania are not such as to give rise to a risk of inhuman or degrading treatment. That presumption may be rebutted — with the consequent obligation for the executing authority to seek further information — only where a specific and concrete risk of a violation of the requested person’s fundamental rights has been shown. The panel therefore ruled out the continued existence of a systemic deficiency in detention conditions in Romanian prisons and held that, where the defence relies on outdated information, it is lawful not to request further information from the issuing State.

In the context of the European Arrest Warrant, the judicial authority of the executing State may refuse to execute the request, even where the issuing State has provided assurances that the person concerned will not be subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment, but only where, on the basis of precise elements, it nevertheless finds that there is a risk that the conditions of detention would be contrary to Article 4 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.

In matters of the European Arrest Warrant, where the issuing State provides assurances that the arrested person will not be subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment, the executing State may refuse surrender only if there exists a concrete risk of detention conditions contrary to Article 4 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. The assessment of detention conditions must be overall and comprehensive, and must therefore take into account a range of factors, including whether there are elements capable of offsetting any shortcomings in relation to conventional standards.

The burden on the requested person to submit elements and circumstances capable of substantiating the risk of being subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment may also be discharged at the appellate stage before the Court of Cassation. This is because such materials consist of reliable international sources and information in the public domain, which may be directly assessed by the appellate court.