EU Judgment in Case C-158/21 Puig Gordi e.a.

Tuesday 31st January 2023

Judgment in Case C-158/21 Puig Gordi e.a.

(Area of Freedom, Security and Justice)

This request for a preliminary ruling concerns the interpretation of a number of provisions of Council Framework Decision 2002/584/JHA of 13 June 2002 on the European arrest warrant and the surrender procedures between Member States, as amended by Council Framework Decision 2009/299/JHA of 26 February 2009.

The referring court asks the Court of Justice a series of questions designed, essentially, to establish whether an executing judicial authority may refuse to execute a European arrest warrant on grounds of the alleged lack of competence of the issuing judicial authority to issue such a warrant and the alleged lack of jurisdiction of the court called upon to try the person charged, and whether Framework Decision 2002/584 precludes the issue of a new European arrest warrant after the execution of a first European arrest warrant has been refused.

Those questions have arisen in connection with the prosecution of former Catalan leaders following a referendum, held on 1 October 2017, concerning self- determination for the Autonomous Community of Catalonia (Spain). European arrest warrants have been issued for a number of those defendants who left Spain at the end of 2017. Those warrants have not been executed, either because a number of the defendants in question were elected to the European Parliament or because of controversy surrounding the criminal proceedings in question. In so far as concerns the case under consideration, that controversy concerns the rules establishing the jurisdiction of the Tribunal Supremo (Supreme Court, Spain) to try the defendants, those rules applying, inter alia, on the basis of the place where the offences were committed and on the connection between the offences with which the defendants are charged.

More specifically, this request for a preliminary ruling has arisen from the refusal of

the Belgian courts to give effect to the European arrest warrant issued against Mr Lluís Puig Gordi. The appellate court which gave a final ruling in the matter based its refusal on the existence of a risk of infringement of the right to be tried by a tribunal established by law, in that it found there to be no express legal basis conferring jurisdiction on the Tribunal Supremo (Supreme Court) to try Mr Puig Gordi. It also held that the likelihood of the presumption of innocence being breached was also to be taken very seriously. Although that refusal directly concerns Mr Puig Gordi alone, the referring court’s request is presented as a means of determining what decisions should be taken with regard to all of the defendants.

Background Documents C-158/21