The national authorities are under an obligation to make further attempts to transfer a prisoner in the framework of the execution of a European arrest warrant, even if the prisoner resists this with a certain degree of success, the Court of Justice of the EU said in a judgement (C-640/15) returned on Wednesday 25 January.
The resistance of a wanted person to being transferred to the authorities of the member state that issued the arrest warrant against him or her cannot, on its own, justify the failure to make further attempts to transfer the person, even after several failed attempts and the expiry of the stated deadlines (no more than ten days after the final decision on the execution of the arrest warrant), the Court found. It considers that the executing judicial authority and the issuing judicial authority must agree on a new transfer date, if the repeated resistance of the wanted person prevented this transfer on the previous occasions. Furthermore, EU law does not expressly limit the number of new transfer dates that can be set, the Court observed. (Original version in French by Jan Kordys)