The High Court has refused to surrender a respondent to Romania under two European Arrest Warrants, ordering his release from both warrants because the sentences overlapped and the Romanian authorities had not clarified how they would be enforced.
Mr Justice Kerida Naidoo delivered the judgment on 6 November 2023. The warrants sought the respondent’s surrender to serve Romanian prison sentences. The 2019 warrant concerned an aggregate sentence of two years, two months and 80 days for offences including smuggling and setting up an organised criminal group. The 2020 warrant concerned a sentence of two years and eight months for smuggling, which incorporated the earlier sentence and added six months for another smuggling charge.
The respondent objected to surrender, arguing that the warrants lacked necessary details and were confusing. He also raised concerns about being punished twice for the same offences. The court said it had enough information to consider the applications despite complaints about the warrants’ format. It was satisfied that the statutory grounds under sections 21A, 22, 23 and 24 of the European Arrest Warrant Act did not prevent surrender, and that the minimum sentence threshold was met.
The court found that the 2019 sentence was not immediately enforceable because it would need to be varied or merged to align with the later aggregate sentence. The Timis judicial authority had assured the court that the respondent would not be punished twice for the 2015 offences, but neither Romanian authority explained what sentence would apply after any proposed amendment or merger.
The applicant argued that surrender could still proceed under the 2020 warrant because it represented the combined sentence and the assurance meant no other sentence would be imposed. The judge found that no authority had committed to annulling the 2019 sentence, and it remained unclear what would happen to it if surrender proceeded under the 2020 warrant. The court distinguished an earlier case in which the same issuing authority had confirmed that an earlier sentence would be annulled if the later one stood.
The court concluded that there was an impermissible lack of clarity about the treatment of the earlier sentence. Under section 16 of the Act, it ordered the respondent’s release from both warrants. It did not consider the respondent’s additional grounds of objection.