JUDGMENT OF 25. 7. 2018 –– CASE C-220/18 PPU
GENERALSTAATSANWALTSCHAFT (CONDITIONS OF DETENTION IN HUNGARY)
99
The European Court of Human Rights has also held, that, when the detainee has space below 3 m2, a
period of detention of a few days may be treated as a short period. However, a period of around 20
days such as that envisaged in the case in the main proceedings by the authorities of the issuing
Member State, which, moreover, may quite possibly be extended in the event of (undefined)
‘circumstances preventing [that period coming to an end]’, cannot be regarded as a short period (see,
to that effect, ECtHR, 20 October 2017, Muršić v. Croatia, CE:ECHR:2016:1020JUD000733413, §§ 146,
152 and 154).
100
Accordingly, the fact that detention in such conditions is temporary or transitional does not, on its
own, rule out all real risk of inhuman or degrading treatment within the meaning of Article 4 of the
Charter.
101
In those circumstances, if the executing judicial authority considers that the information available to it
is insufficient to allow it to adopt a surrender decision, it may, as has already been stated in
paragraph 63 of this judgment, request, in accordance with Article 15(2) of the Framework Decision,
that the issuing judicial authority provide it with the supplementary information it deems necessary in
order to obtain further details on the actual and precise conditions of detention of the person
concerned in the prison in question.
102
In the present case, it appears from the material submitted to the Court that the Hungarian authorities
have not answered the 78 questions that the Bremen Public Prosecutor’s Office sent to them, in
accordance with the referring court’s order of 9 January 2018, on 10 January 2018 to enquire about
detention conditions in Budapest prison and in any other facility in which the person concerned
might, depending on the circumstances, be held.
103
A number of those questions, taken individually, are relevant for the assessment of the actual and
precise conditions of the person concerned’s detention in the light of the factors referred to in
paragraph 93 of this judgment. However, as the Advocate General has also in essence observed in
point 76 of his Opinion, those questions –– because of their number, their scope (every prison in
which the person concerned might be held) and their content (aspects of detention that are of no
obvious relevance for the purposes of that assessment, such as, for example, opportunities for religious
worship, whether it is possible to smoke, the arrangements for the washing of clothing and whether
there are bars or slatted shutters on cell windows) –– make it, in practice, impossible for the
authorities of the issuing Member State to provide a useful answer, given, in particular, the short time
limits laid down in Article 17 of the Framework Decision for the execution of a European arrest
warrant.
104
A request of that nature, which results in the operation of the European arrest warrant being brought
to a standstill, is not compatible with the duty of sincere cooperation, laid down in the first
subparagraph of Article 4(3) TEU, which must inform the dialogue between the executing and issuing
judicial authorities when, inter alia, information is provided pursuant to Article 15(2) and (3) of the
Framework Decision.
105
At the hearing the Bremen Public Prosecutor’s Office thus stated that it has never received an answer
to this type of request for information, which the referring court is said to send as a matter of course
to the authorities of three issuing Member States, including Hungary. It thus explained that, in the
absence of a decision of the referring court approving the surrender, no European arrest warrant
issued by a court of one of those three Member States is now being executed by that office.
106
Nevertheless, it is not disputed that, in response to the request of 10 January 2018, the Hungarian
authorities gave the Bremen Public Prosecutor’s Office –– in their letters of 20 September 2017
and 27 March 2018 –– an assurance that the person concerned, irrespective of the facility he is
detained in, will not be subject to any inhuman or degrading treatment within the meaning of
Article 4 of the Charter, as a result of his detention in Hungary.
18
ECLI:EU:C:2018:589
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