Overall goals and fundamental rights a violation if family members reside in a state other than the issuing state. The ECtHR dealt with a refusal to transfer a British national, sentenced and detained in the United Kingdom, to the Netherlands, where his wife and children lived. In the communication note, the court asked the government whether the refusal violated the prisoner’s and his family’s right to respect for family life. However, the case was settled and the United Kingdom agreed to transfer the applicant under certain conditions.75 The ties with both states  – issuing and executing  – should also be assessed. Furthermore, it should be noted that, in most cases, maintaining family life will benefit social rehabilitation; in fact, there is strong evidence that family support is one of the most important factors contributing to successful rehabilitation.76 Nevertheless, in 2015, while examining a refusal to transfer a Turkish national from Romania to Turkey, where his wife and four children lived, the ECtHR stated that there is no right to choose the place to serve a sentence and dismissed a complaint about respect to family life as incompatible ratione materiae with the provisions of the ECHR.77 This decision is rather surprising given previous case law concerning the right to family life; it remains to be seen how this jurisprudence will develop. Right to a fair trial In light of established ECtHR jurisprudence, transfer proceedings would probably not fall within the scope of Article 6 of the ECHR, which guarantees the right to a fair trial. The ECtHR has not dealt with issues arising under the Framework Decision on transfer of prisoners, but has dealt with the Council of Europe Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons and the Additional Protocol. In these cases, it stated that Article 6 does not apply to the transfer proceedings because there is no determination of a criminal charge or a civil claim,78 unless the transfer proceedings influenced the outcome of the actual criminal proceedings.79 As the proceedings provided for in the three Framework Decisions bear resemblance to the proceedings provided for in the Transfer Convention, it could be expected that they will remain outside of the scope of Article 6 unless very particular circumstances trigger its application. This presumption is also reinforced by a case dealing with the European Arrest Warrant proceedings, in which the ECtHR noted that the European Arrest Warrant procedure replaces the standard 75 ECtHR, H.S. and Others v. the United Kingdom, No. 16477/09, 5 October 2010. 76 UNODC (2006b), p. 1. 77 ECtHR, Serce v. Romania, No. 35049/08, 30 June 2015. 78 ECtHR, Szabó v. Sweden, No. 28578/03, 27 June 2006. 79 ECtHR, Buijen v. Germany, No. 27804/05, 1 April 2010. extradition procedure between EU Member States and does not concern the determination of a criminal charge, meaning Article 6 would not apply.80 Other fundamental rights The ECtHR has also examined the applicability of Articles  5 and  7 of the ECHR, which prohibit arbitrary deprivation of liberty and punishment without law, respectively. The court has stated that deprivations of liberty in the executing state are based on convictions in the issuing state and are therefore compatible with Article 5 (1)(a). Article 7(1), on the other hand, is inapplicable in cases of different conditions of conditional release in the issuing state and the executing state, because Article 7 refers to the notion of penalty while conditional release falls in the scope of sentence execution.81 Article 9 could be also invoked – when freedom of religion would suffer in the receiving state, as established in a case regarding the expulsion of Christians from the United Kingdom to Pakistan.82 However, these cases appear to be less relevant in an EU context. Additionally, Article 4 of Protocol No. 4 to the ECHR prohibits collective expulsions of aliens. An expulsion is ‘collective’ if it affects aliens as a group, without individual examinations of every particular case.83 This provision could come into play if authorities targeted certain groups of prisoners of the same nationality and qualify them to transfer as a group without individual consideration. However, it seems that the wording of the Framework Decision on transfer of prisoners prevents such a poss­ ibility – the decision repeatedly refers to the purpose of facilitating the social rehabilitation of the sentenced person and assessments of the prospects of achieving this goal. Hence all transfers should be individually assessed. It should be noted that whenever issues under the ECHR arise, the persons subject to transfer should have access to an effective remedy in accordance with Article 13. Correspondingly, Article 47 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights provides that everyone whose rights and freedoms guaranteed by the law of the Union are violated has the right to an effective remedy before a tribunal. It follows that, when a sentenced person does not consent to a transfer and alleges, for example, that detention conditions in the executing state violate the 80 ECtHR, Monedero Andora c. l’Espagne, No. 41138/05, 7 October 2008. 81 ECtHR, Szabó v. Sweden, No. 28578/03, 27 June 2006; Csoszánski v. Sweden, No. 22318/02, 27 June 2006; Ciok v. Poland, No. 498/10, 23 October 2012. For a detailed explanation of the notions of ‘penalty’ and ‘sentence execution’, see ECtHR, Del Río Prada v. Spain, No. 42750/09, 21 October 2013. 82 ECtHR, Z. and T. v. the United Kingdom, No. 27034/05, 28 February 2006. 83 ECtHR, Čonka v. Belgium, No. 51564/99, 5 February 2002. 41