The High Court has ordered Adrian Mihalcea’s surrender to Romania to serve a three-year prison sentence, dismissing his objections over detention conditions and the effect surrender would have on his family life in Ireland.
In a judgment delivered on 6 March 2023, Ms Justice Caroline Biggs made the order under section 16 of the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003. The application sought surrender to enforce a sentence imposed after Romanian proceedings for aggravated theft. A Romanian court imposed a suspended sentence of two years and four months in 2007. In 2013, an eight-month sentence was imposed and the earlier suspended term activated, producing a total sentence of three years. An appeal was dismissed in October 2013.
Mihalcea was arrested in Ireland on 15 December 2021 under a Schengen Information System alert. The court was satisfied he was the person named in the warrant and that no other statutory bar to surrender applied.
The judge considered reports documenting overcrowding, poor physical conditions, healthcare shortcomings and violence in Romanian prisons. She said the evidence showed prison conditions could vary between prisons and within individual institutions. The Romanian National Administration of Penitentiaries gave assurances that Mihalcea would receive at least three square metres of personal space, excluding sanitary facilities, in Rahova, Vaslui, Iaşi or any other prison where he might be held. It also assured the court that he would be detained in decent conditions respecting human dignity, with medical care and other protections. The issuing judicial authority confirmed that the High Court could trust those assurances.
Justice Biggs found there were not substantial grounds to believe Mihalcea faced a real risk of inhuman or degrading treatment if surrendered. She dismissed that objection under section 37 of the 2003 Act.
Mihalcea also argued that surrender would disproportionately interfere with his and his family’s rights. In an affidavit, he said he lived in Ireland with his wife and two school-age children, ran a car-valeting business and shared responsibility for taking the children to and from school. The court found the circumstances did not place his case beyond the norm and concluded there had been no significant or egregious delay. It also held that the fact he could not serve his sentence in Ireland did not amount to exceptional circumstances. The Article 8 objection was rejected, and the court ordered surrender.