The Diplomat
The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) yesterday warned Belgium that it cannot refuse to execute a European arrest warrant issued by Spain based solely on the alleged lack of competence of the Supreme Court to issue such orders or on the risk of “infringement of the fundamental rights of the defendant” if it cannot demonstrate the alleged “systemic and widespread shortcomings” of the Spanish justice system. The ruling opens the possibility of asking again for the surrender of the former president of the Generalitat Carles Puigdemont.
The Luxembourg Court ruled this decision after the judge Pablo Llarena, of the Supreme Court, went in March 2021 to the CJEU due to the refusal of the Belgian Justice to deliver the exconseller Lluis Puig, considering that the competent court to claim his extradition should be the High Court of Justice of Catalonia, and not the Supreme Court, and that his fundamental rights, such as the presumption of innocence, could be violated in case of being delivered.
“An executing judicial authority cannot refuse, in principle, to execute a European arrest warrant (EAW) on the ground that the court which is to try the person sought in the issuing Member State lacks jurisdiction,” warned the European Court in its judgment, which is not subject to appeal and is binding. According to the CJEU, the Belgian authority responsible for the execution of the European arrest warrant does not have the capacity to question the competence of the Supreme Court to demand an extradition and, therefore, it cannot refuse to execute the European arrest warrant for that reason.
On the other hand, the CJEU recalls that “that authority must, however, refuse to execute such a warrant if it finds that there are systemic or generalized deficiencies affecting its judicial system in that Member State and that the court which will have to try the person sought in that Member State is manifestly incompetent to do so.” However, it warned, for this to be the case, the executing judicial authorities (in this case, the Belgian ones) would have to demonstrate that there are “systemic and generalized” deficiencies in the judicial system of the Member State requesting extradition.
Therefore, “the executing judicial authority may refuse execution on the ground of lack of jurisdiction of the court which will have to try the requested person only if it concludes that, on the one hand, such deficiencies exist in the issuing Member State and, on the other hand, the lack of jurisdiction of that court is manifest,” the judgment states. The High Court also recalls that the principles of mutual trust and mutual recognition between the Member States “constitute the cornerstone” of the system of judicial cooperation that frames the Euro warrants.
Apart from that, the European court also grants Llarena the possibility of issuing a new European arrest warrant against Carles Puigdemont and the exconsellers Toni Comín and Lluis Puig for the alleged crimes of sedition and embezzlement because, according to the sentence, a judge may issue several successive EAWs against the same person “in order to obtain his or her surrender by a Member State after that State has refused to execute a first EAW directed against that person”, provided that the execution of the new arrest warrant does not result “in a breach of that person’s fundamental rights”.
Last July, the advocate general of the CJEU, Jean Richard de la Tour, already warned that Belgian Justice cannot refuse the surrender of former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont and other politicians involved in the Procès if it does not demonstrate “systemic and widespread deficiencies” in Spain’s judicial system.
Following the decision of the Luxembourg Court, Carles Puigdemont yesterday again denounced the “persecution” he is subject to because of his political ideas and assured that he will continue “fighting”, as he has no intention of returning to Spain to “surrender or surrender”. Likewise, he assured before the journalists -accompanied by the ex-consellers Lluís Puig, Toni Comín and Clara Ponsatí and by his lawyer Gonzalo Boye- that the sentence of the CJEU leaves the extraditions in “dead end” because it imposes a series of conditions, together with the presentation of new euro-orders, which in practice “make them unfeasible”.
