Judgment — ECLI:EU:C:2008:437
Date: 2008-07-17
Language of the case: German
Court formation: Grand Chamber
Based on: Treaty on European Union (1992)
Subject matter: Justice and home affairs
Concepts: European arrest warrant
Procedure: Reference for a preliminary ruling
Origin: Germany

Summary of the Judgment 1. European Union – Police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters – Framework Decision on the European arrest warrant and the surrender procedures between Member States (Council Framework Decision 2002/584, Art. 4(6)) 2. European Union – Police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters – Framework Decision on the European arrest warrant and the surrender procedures between Member States (Council Framework Decision 2002/584, Art. 4(6)) 1. Article 4(6) of Framework Decision 2002/584 on the European arrest warrant and the surrender procedures between Member States, which authorises the executing judicial authority to refuse to execute such a warrant issued for the purposes of execution of a sentence where the requested person ‘is staying in, or is a national or a resident of, the executing Member State’, and where that State undertakes to execute that sentence in accordance with its domestic law, must be interpreted as meaning that a requested person is ‘resident’ in the executing Member State when he has established his actual place of residence there and he is ‘staying’ there when, following a stable period of presence in that State, he has acquired connections with that State which are of a similar degree to those resulting from residence. Since the objective of the Framework Decision is to put in place a system of surrender, as between judicial authorities, of convicted persons or suspects for the purpose of enforcing judgments or of criminal proceedings, based on the principle of mutual recognition – a surrender which the executing judicial authority can oppose only on one of the grounds for refusal provided for by the Framework Decision – the terms ‘staying’ and ‘resident’, which determine the scope of Article 4(6), must be defined uniformly, since they concern autonomous concepts of Union law. Therefore, in their national law transposing Article 4(6), the Member States are not entitled to give those terms a broader meaning than that which derives from such a uniform interpretation. (see paras 43, 46, 54, operative part) 2. In order to ascertain, when interpreting Article 4(6) of Framework Decision 2002/584 on the European arrest warrant and the surrender procedures between Member States, whether there are connections between the requested person and the executing Member State which lead to the conclusion that that person is covered by the term ‘staying’ within the meaning of that provision, which authorises the executing judicial authority to refuse to execute such a warrant issued for the purposes of execution of a sentence where the requested person is staying in the executing Member State, it is for that authority to make an overall assessment of various objective factors characterising the situation of that person, including, in particular, the length, nature and conditions of his presence and the family and economic connections which that person has with the executing Member State. (see paras 48, 54, operative part)