The Austrian Public Prosecutor's Office is, provided that certain conditions are met, an issuing judicial authority within the meaning of Framework Decision 2002/584 on the European arrest warrant, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled on Wednesday 9 October (Case C-489/19 PPU).
In this urgent case, the German court asks the Court whether it can execute the European arrest warrant issued in May by the Public Prosecutor's Office in Vienna (Austria) against a person temporarily detained in Germany for theft, and confirmed by the Vienna Regional Court.
In other words, with reference to European Case-Law (see EUROPE 12264/20), the fact that the office of a public prosecutor is subject to orders and instructions from the executive power preclude the issue of a European arrest warrant?
The Court answers this question in the negative, but sets conditions. It considers that European arrest warrants issued by the public prosecutors' offices of a Member State are valid, despite the fact that those public prosecutor’s offices are exposed to the risk of being subject, directly or indirectly, to directions or instructions in a specific case from the executive, such as a Minister for Justice, in the context of the issue of those arrest warrants.
However, the European judge specifies that in order to be transmitted by the said public prosecutors' offices, these arrest warrants must be subject to endorsement by a court which reviews independently and objectively, having access to the entire criminal file to which any specific directions or instructions from the executive are added, the conditions of issue and the proportionality of those arrest warrants.
The court in question thus adopts an autonomous decision that gives final form to the arrest warrants. This condition has been respected in the main proceedings.
See the judgment: http://bit.ly/33hG9l6 (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)