The Court of Appeal allowed an appeal against an order to surrender Slawomir Palonka to Poland, ruling that a required section of the European arrest warrant had been left blank. It set aside the High Court’s surrender order and discharged him.
The appeal concerned a warrant seeking Palonka’s surrender in connection with a 10-month prison sentence imposed by a court in Poznan on 29 January 2004. He had attended an earlier District Court hearing in Nowys on 30 June 2003, when a fine was imposed, but was not present when that penalty was changed to imprisonment.
The warrant indicated that Palonka had known about the scheduled trial, authorised a lawyer to defend him and had been represented by that lawyer. But the section asking the issuing authority to explain how those conditions had been met was empty.
The High Court ordered surrender on 4 November 2014. It considered the missing information unnecessary because Palonka had not presented evidence disputing the warrant’s certification. He appealed after receiving a certificate that his case raised a point of law of exceptional public importance.
The Court of Appeal held that the European Arrest Warrant Act required the information to be provided when the warrant relied on that form of certification. It rejected the Minister’s argument that the statutory phrase “where appropriate” made the additional information optional in this case. The court said the statutory requirement could not be set aside by interpreting the Act in line with the aims of the relevant European framework decision.
The court also rejected the view that Palonka first had to produce evidence challenging the certification. Surrender proceedings are inquisitorial, it said, so the executing court must independently check whether the statutory requirements are met. Without the information, the court could not properly assess the certification, and the person facing surrender could not make a focused challenge to its basis.
The omission was not an insubstantial defect that could be overlooked under section 45C of the Act, the court concluded. It answered the certified legal question in the negative, allowed the appeal, vacated the 4 November 2014 surrender order and discharged Palonka. The ruling addressed whether the warrant met the statutory requirements; it did not decide the underlying criminal allegation.