The High Court has refused an application to surrender a man to Romania to serve a sentence of three years and four months, finding that the issuing authority had not shown that safeguards for trials held in his absence were met.
Mr Justice Paul Burns gave the judgment on 23 April 2021 in proceedings brought by the Minister for Justice and Equality. Romania sought the man’s surrender under a European arrest warrant issued on 4 November 2019. The sentence imposed on 25 September 2019 combined punishment for driving without a licence and refusing to provide a blood sample with an earlier two-year suspended sentence for aggravated robbery.
The judgment says the man was not present at either the 2019 proceedings or the earlier case. Under section 45 of the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003, as amended, surrender in such circumstances was precluded unless the warrant established specified safeguards concerning notice, legal representation or service of the decision.
The High Court sought further information twice. The issuing authority said the man had been informed of the 2019 trial and had a lawyer, but also said the lawyer’s authority had been cancelled. It said the decision was served on the man’s mother and that an appeal was lodged out of time. The authority did not complete the requested section 45 information table for either the 2019 sentence or the earlier suspended sentence, despite receiving a sample table.
The judge was not satisfied that the man had personally received notice of the scheduled 2019 trial and been told that a decision could be made in his absence. Nor was the court satisfied that he was actually defended by a lawyer at that trial, or that service of the decision on his mother met the statutory requirements. For the 2015 sentence, the authority again did not complete the table, and the judge was not satisfied that any of the required alternatives had been met.
The court also considered whether the man’s defence rights had otherwise been adequately protected, applying a purposive approach in line with the Supreme Court’s decision in *Minister for Justice and Equality v Zarnescu* [2020] IESC 59. The judge was not satisfied that they had been protected in either proceeding. He therefore refused the surrender application. The judgment does not order surrender or determine any issue beyond the application before the High Court.