The High Court refused an application by a man sought for prosecution in Poland for a certificate allowing an appeal against his surrender. It held that the European arrest warrant (EAW) had not been amended and that the proposed appeal raised a question that did not arise on the case’s facts.
The application concerned a 2016 High Court order for the respondent’s surrender to Poland on two alleged offences. The present judgment, delivered by Ms Justice Donnelly on 16 January 2018, considered only whether to certify an appeal under section 16(11) of the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003, as amended. It did not reconsider or set aside the earlier surrender order.
The respondent had argued that information from the Polish issuing authority created ambiguity about the offences. The authority had said that, if it verified his claim that he left Poland in 2007, it could alter the period during which he was suspected of committing the offences, without changing their legal classification.
His counsel submitted that changing the dates could affect details concerning a second woman and amount to a fundamental change in the offences. The judge said the earlier judgment had found that the charges then set out in the EAW remained unchanged. Any date adjustment would depend on Poland’s assessment of the information and would not, on the response before the court, alter the offences’ legal classification.
The judge concluded that the proposed point of law did not arise from the decision under challenge. The six questions framed for the proposed appeal did not challenge the finding that there had been no change to the EAW; answering them in the respondent’s favour would therefore not prevent surrender. The court also said the CJEU’s decision in Leymann and Pustovarov addressed, by analogy, when changes to offence details may alter their nature, and no different interpretation of the Irish legislation was argued.
The court rejected the application for a certificate of appeal. The judgment records no new decision on the surrender itself.