The High Court refused a respondent’s application to add a family-rights objection to three proceedings in which Poland seeks his surrender to serve sentences or remaining portions of sentences imposed by courts in Myszków.
The proceedings concern three European arrest warrants dated 18 June 2009, 4 February 2010 and 7 October 2010. The warrants were executed together on 12 August 2011. The respondent had filed objections in each case and, with the applicant’s consent, added further objections in February 2012.
When the hearing resumed on 23 October 2012, the respondent sought informal permission to amend his objections again. The court declined to consider the request without a formal motion and directed him to bring one. He filed a motion the next day, seeking leave to add grounds under section 37 of the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003 and Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The proposed grounds argued that surrender could affect his daughter’s family rights and his own, and would be disproportionate under the Convention and the EU Charter.
In an affidavit, the respondent said his daughter, identified as W, and her mother, identified as T, had moved to Ireland in 2009 and settled in County Kildare, where W attended school. He described himself as W’s primary source of financial and emotional support, alleged that T could not adequately support her, and said he lacked money for an expert report. These were the respondent’s assertions in support of the motion, not findings made by the court.
The judge accepted that the circumstances prompting the proposed objection arose in early September 2012 and that the respondent had sought to raise it in a timely way. But the court considered that the proposed argument had little prospect of success because of the acknowledged lack of supporting evidence. It said the threshold for resisting surrender on Article 8 grounds was very high and required truly exceptional circumstances. The judge also said the respondent could not present evidence with sufficient weight to show a realistic prospect of establishing a breach of his or W’s family-life rights, and that steps other than refusing surrender could address the issues raised.
The court refused leave to make the amendment, finding that the interests of justice did not require it. The order concerned permission to amend the objections only. The judgment did not determine whether the respondent would be surrendered under the warrants.