In a judgment delivered on Tuesday 15 October (judgment C-128/18), the Court of Justice of the European Union stated that judicial authority executing a European arrest warrant must take into account all relevant material aspects of the conditions of detention within the penitentiary establishment in which it is specifically envisaged to incarcerate the person who is the subject of the warrant.
The Hanseatic Higher Regional Court of Hamburg is requested to execute the European arrest warrant issued by a Romanian court against Mr Dorobantu, a Romanian national. It took into account the information provided by the Romanian authorities regarding the conditions of detention in which the person in question would be held after their surrender.
The Court of Justice of the European Union was asked about the criteria to be used to assess whether the conditions of detention that Mr Dorobantu would experience in Romania complied with the requirements of the Charter of Fundamental Rights to prohibit inhuman and degrading treatment (Article 4).
According to the Court's judgment, where there is objective, reliable, accurate and duly updated evidence of systemic deficiencies in the conditions of detention in the prisons of the Member State issuing the European arrest warrant, the executing judicial authority must take into account all relevant material aspects of the conditions of detention within the penitentiary establishment in which it is specifically envisaged to incarcerate the person who is the subject of the warrant.
These aspects may include the personal space available to each prisoner in a cell in that establishment, the sanitary conditions, as well as the extent of the prisoner's freedom of movement within that establishment.
Regarding the personal space available per prisoner, the executing judicial authority must—in the absence of minimum European standards in this respect—take into account the minimum requirements arising from the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (Article 3) as interpreted by the European Court of Human Rights.
When calculating this space, the space occupied by any furniture must be taken into account, although any surface area occupied by sanitary infrastructure is not. Nevertheless, prisoners must be allowed to move normally in the cell, the Court notes.
Finally, according to the European judge, the judicial authority executing a European arrest warrant cannot rule out the existence of a real risk of inhumane or degrading treatment solely on the grounds that the person in question has, in the issuing Member State, a means of appeal enabling him to contest the conditions of his detention. Moreover, the existence of there being a risk of inhuman treatment based on conditions of detention cannot be balanced out against considerations relating to the effectiveness of judicial cooperation in criminal matters when deciding on a transfer.
See the judgment: http://bit.ly/2OQXbSW (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)