The High Court has ordered the surrender of Filip Brazda to the Czech Republic under a European Arrest Warrant, after dismissing his objections to the request. The order is to be made under section 16 of the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003, as amended.
In a decision delivered on 19 December 2023, Ms Justice Melanie Greally said the request concerned a seven-month prison sentence imposed after Mr Brazda failed to pay a fine. The fine followed a conviction arising from an incident on 27 March 2020, when police stopped him while he was driving after having been banned from driving for two years.
The warrant was issued in October 2022. The Czech authority told the High Court that Mr Brazda had appeared in person at the original hearing, where he was fined 70,000 Czech koruna. A seven-month substitute sentence was imposed in January 2021 after the fine was not paid. The authority said that sentence had not yet entered into legal force because Mr Brazda had not been served with the order.
The authority further stated that, if surrendered, he would be served with the order at a custody session and could appeal within three days. It said the fine was the only sentence then in force, and that he could still avoid execution of the prison sentence by paying it.
For Mr Brazda, counsel argued that uncertainty remained about whether the prosecution had concluded and whether the warrant met the statutory requirements. He also submitted that the sentence could be avoided by paying the fine. The judge concluded that the first-instance proceedings had ended with the January 2021 decision imposing the default sentence. She found that, once served, the sentence would become immediately enforceable; any further proceedings would concern service and execution of the sentence.
The court held that the seven-month sentence exceeded the four-month minimum gravity threshold. It also rejected a further objection that the warrant did not establish correspondence between the alleged conduct and the Irish offence of driving while disqualified. The judge said the validity of the driving ban was a matter of proof for the Czech court, and found the conduct described in the warrant corresponded to the Irish offence.
The judge found no other statutory bar to surrender and dismissed the respondent’s objections. The decision orders surrender; it does not state that the surrender had already taken place.