The Supreme Court dismissed Arkadiusz Piotr Lipinski’s appeal in proceedings under the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003, finding that two subsequent Court of Justice of the European Union rulings resolved the issues he had raised against surrender.
The judgment, delivered by Chief Justice Clarke on 13 February 2018, followed an earlier Supreme Court decision to refer questions of EU law to the CJEU. After the CJEU issued decisions in Sławomir Andrzej Zdziaszek and Samet Ardic, the parties told the Supreme Court they considered the EU law position clear and did not wish to make further submissions.
One issue concerned Mr Lipinski’s absence from the hearing of his original appeal against conviction and imprisonment. The evidence suggested he had been represented and aware of that appeal, but the European arrest warrant did not include information invoking the provisions that permit surrender in certain circumstances when an accused was absent. The Supreme Court said Zdziaszek made clear that a court could assess whether the relevant objective conditions were met even if the warrant did not refer to them. That ground of appeal could not succeed.
The second issue concerned the revocation of a suspension of part of Mr Lipinski’s sentence. The suspension was revoked after he failed to comply with its conditions; he was absent from the revocation hearing. The Supreme Court applied the CJEU’s ruling in Samet Ardic, which said such revocation proceedings are not part of the “trial resulting in the decision” for the relevant EU rules, provided the revocation does not change the nature or level of the original sentence.
The court said the Polish courts’ decision reinstated the original sentence without variation. It concluded that the second ground also failed and that the appeal must be dismissed. The judgment addressed the appeal; it did not itself make a separate surrender order.