European Arrest Warrant - Criminal procedure - Whether extradition to Romania was in breach of Article 3 of the ECHR

A person was convicted of a crime in Romania. He was arrested in Sweden with regard to the European Arrest Warrant. The Swedish court was to decide whether surrender was a breach of the ECHR.

The court referred to the judgments of Aranyosi and Caldararu, stating that to refuse extradition with regard to article 4 of the charter and article 3 of the ECHR, there has to be a real danger of a breach of basic human rights and that it is up to the executing member state to search for information from the issuing member state, to make sure that there is no such risk. The Swedish court finds that there are several cases from the European Court of Human Rights where the court has found that there have been breaches of article 3 of the ECHR in Romanian prisons. According to the Swedish court, there were good reasons to believe that anyone serving time in a Romanian prison faces the risk of being exposed to treatment that would be in breach of article 3 of the ECHR. Therefore, the extradition is refused. The court also considered a conditional extradition, if Romania could provide binding guarantees that Article 3 would not be overridden. Such a solution, however, was considered not compatible with the EU Court of Justice judgment C-399/11, Melloni. 

Article 4 EU Charter - Prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment

C-388/08, Leymann Pustarov

C-404/15 Aranyosi

C-659/15 Caldararu

C-399/11 Melloni

Several cases from the European Court of Human rights are taken into consideration when the Swedish court decides whether the conditions in the Romanian prisons are acceptable or not.