JUDGMENT OF 25. 7. 2018 –– CASE C-220/18 PPU
GENERALSTAATSANWALTSCHAFT (CONDITIONS OF DETENTION IN HUNGARY)
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Therefore, even if the issuing Member State provides for legal remedies that make it possible to review
the legality of detention conditions from the perspective of the fundamental rights, the executing
judicial authorities are still bound to undertake an individual assessment of the situation of each person
concerned, in order to satisfy themselves that their decision on the surrender of that person will not
expose him, on account of those conditions, to a real risk of inhuman or degrading treatment within
the meaning of Article 4 of the Charter.
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That interpretation is not in any way inconsistent with what was held by the European Court of
Human Rights in its judgment of 14 November 2017, Domján v. Hungary
(CE:ECHR:2017:1114DEC000543317). In that judgment the European Court of Human Rights, first,
merely found that, since the remedies introduced by the 2016 Law guaranteed in principle genuine
redress for ECHR infringements originating in prison overcrowding and other unsuitable conditions of
detention in Hungary, the application brought before it in that case had to be dismissed as inadmissible
as long as those domestic avenues of redress had not been exhausted. Secondly, it made clear that it
reserved the right to re-examine the effectiveness of those remedies in the light of their application in
practice.
The extent of the assessment of conditions of detention in the issuing Member State
The prisons to be assessed
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In accordance with the case-law referred to in paragraphs 61 to 66 of this judgment, the executing
judicial authorities responsible for deciding on the surrender of a person who is the subject of a
European arrest warrant must determine, specifically and precisely, whether, in the circumstances of a
particular case, there is a real risk that that person will be subjected in the issuing Member State to
inhuman or degrading treatment.
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It follows that the assessment which those authorities are required to make cannot, in view of the fact
that it must be specific and precise, concern the general conditions of detention in all the prisons in
the issuing Member State in which the individual concerned might be detained.
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The Court observes in that regard that the option available to the executing judicial authorities under
Article 15(2) of the Framework Decision to request that the necessary supplementary information be
furnished as a matter of urgency when they find the information provided by the issuing Member
State to be insufficient to allow them to decide on surrender is a last resort, to which recourse may be
had only in exceptional cases in which the executing judicial authority considers that it does not have
all the formal elements necessary to adopt a decision on surrender as a matter of urgency (see, to that
effect, judgment of 23 January 2018, Piotrowski, C-367/16, EU:C:2018:27, paragraphs 60 and 61).
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That provision thus cannot be used by the executing judicial authorities to request, as a matter of
course, that the issuing Member State provide general information concerning detention conditions in
the prisons in which a person who is the subject of a European arrest warrant might be detained.
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Moreover, such a request would in most cases entail requesting information about all the prisons
located in the issuing Member State, since a person who is the subject of a European arrest warrant
can, as a general rule, be detained in any prison in the territory of that State. It is generally not
possible at the stage of executing a European arrest warrant to identify all the prisons in which such a
person will actually be detained, as a transfer from one prison to another may be warranted because of
unforeseen circumstances that may even be unrelated to the individual concerned.
ECLI:EU:C:2018:589
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