Polish arrest warrants cannot be rejected outright, EU lawyer says

Doubts about the independence of the Polish judiciary do not justify other EU countries’ decisions to automatically ignore European arrest warrants (EAW) issued by that country.

Top EU lawyer Manuel Campos Sanchez-Bordona argued on Thursday.

An Amsterdam court had referred the matter to the European Court of Justice at the end of August, pointing to Poland’s controversial judicial reforms.

A country can refuse to surrender someone if there is a real risk that the concerned person’s fundamental rights will be breached.

An Amsterdam court claims that the deficiencies of the Polish judiciary were so stark that no accused could be guaranteed the right to an independent tribunal and that EAWs issued by Poland should automatically not be executed.

“The advocate general considers that exceptional response has its limits, and does not go so far as to require the automatic non-execution of every EAW issued by the judicial authority of the member state affected by those systemic or generalised deficiencies,’’ the court said in a press release.

The Amsterdam court argues that judicial independence has been eroded to such an extent that courts cannot act independently of the Polish government and parliament.

But Sanchez-Bordona argues that refusals to surrender should be limited to exceptional circumstances after examining individual circumstances.

In addition to EU principles on judicial cooperation, he argues that a blanket stop would likely result in crimes going unpunished and undermine the rights of victims, according to a press release.

The court can follow his arguments in its ruling, but it does not have to.

The backdrop of the case is an arrest warrant issued by Poland in 2015 against a Pole who is alleged to have smuggled around 200 kilograms of hard and soft drugs from the Netherlands to his home country.

In a similar case involving Ireland in 2018, the ECJ ruled that European authorities could suspend a Polish arrest warrant, but only after assessing individual cases.