The High Court has refused to surrender an anonymised woman to Poland under two European arrest warrants, finding that the consequences for her and her daughter would make surrender disproportionate in the circumstances.
In a judgment delivered on 19 June 2014, Mr Justice Edwards upheld the woman’s objection under section 37 of the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003. He found that surrender would be incompatible with the right to respect for family life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The court refused surrender on both warrants; it did not determine whether she was guilty of the alleged offences.
The warrants sought her return to Poland for prosecution. One concerned 13 alleged offences, including deception-related offences and disposing of property attached by a bailiff. The other concerned a single alleged multi-act deception offence. The woman did not consent to surrender. The court found the statutory warrant requirements satisfied, but considered her family-life objection separately.
She said she had moved to Ireland in 2004 without knowing she was under criminal investigation. Her daughter, born in Ireland in 2008, had always lived with her. The woman described the pair’s close relationship and raised concerns about her own mental health and the effect of separation on the child. Psychological and medical reports before the court described serious suicidal ideation and warned of potentially severe consequences for the daughter. The reports were not challenged by the applicant, who called no expert evidence.
The judge assessed the alleged offences as crimes of dishonesty of moderate seriousness, towards the lower end of that category. He also found significant and largely unexplained delays: the Polish authorities had not adequately accounted for the period before the warrants reached Ireland in July 2011, and the Irish authorities had not explained why they were not executed until August 2013. More than ten years had passed since the last alleged incident. The judge found the woman had not left Poland as a fugitive and bore no responsibility for the delays.
The court did not find that delay had eliminated any social need for surrender. It concluded, however, that the remaining pressure for surrender was much reduced, leaving a moderate public interest. Against that, the judge considered the woman’s settled life in Ireland, the child’s best interests, the close mother-daughter relationship and the evidence of likely harm. He concluded that surrender would be injurious and harmful and disproportionate overall, and refused both surrender requests.