The High Court has asked the Court of Justice of the European Union to clarify how Irish courts should assess a European Arrest Warrant issued by Lithuania to enforce the remainder of a sentence originally imposed in Norway.
The request for a preliminary ruling, made by Donnelly J. on 25 June 2019, concerns Giedrius Gustas, a Lithuanian national. The source document identifies the Minister for Justice and Equality as applicant and Gustas as respondent.
The warrant seeks his surrender to Lithuania to serve one year, seven months and 24 days in prison. The sentence followed a Norwegian conviction for unlawful delivery of a very large quantity of narcotic substances. The judgment says Gustas was detected in Norway in January 2014 with about 4.6kg of methamphetamine concealed in a car’s exhaust pipe. It records that he had agreed in Lithuania to deliver the drugs to Norway for €570.
Lithuania recognised the Norwegian judgment in 2015 under a bilateral agreement and arranged for the sentence to be enforced under Lithuanian law. After being transferred there, Gustas was released on parole under intensive supervision. A Lithuanian court later ordered him to serve the remaining sentence after finding that he had failed to comply with parole conditions. The European Arrest Warrant was issued in May 2018. He was arrested in Ireland in January 2019.
Gustas objected to surrender, arguing that only Norway, where he was convicted, could seek it, and that the offence was extraterritorial under section 44 of Ireland’s European Arrest Warrant Act. The Minister argued that Lithuania’s recognition and enforcement of the sentence allowed it to issue the warrant. The Minister also submitted that the described conduct could hypothetically amount to conspiracy to possess controlled drugs for sale or supply under Irish law.
The High Court referred two questions to the EU court. They ask whether the EU warrant framework applies where a member state recognises and enforces a sentence imposed in a non-EU country, and how an executing court should assess an offence said to have occurred in that third country when preparatory acts took place in the issuing state.
The High Court’s stated preliminary view was that the framework could apply in those circumstances. It also considered that the executing court would need to assess double criminality and whether the offence was extraterritorial, using a counterfactual analysis. If preparatory acts in Lithuania were treated as having occurred in Ireland and could amount to conspiracy here, the court said the extraterritoriality ground might not prevent surrender.
These were preliminary views accompanying the reference, not a final ruling on whether Gustas should be surrendered. The document records that the surrender hearing was continuing when the reference was made; it does not state the EU court’s later answer or the final outcome in Ireland.