The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has ruled that member states cannot refuse to hand over a person sought under a European arrest warrant simply because they consider a sentence imposed elsewhere in the EU too harsh.
In its judgment in Case C-583/24, published today, the Luxembourg-based court said an alleged imbalance between a penalty and the seriousness of an offence was “not sufficient, in itself, to justify a refusal to execute” a warrant. Even significant differences between the criminal codes of member states did not change that, it added.
The case dates back to December 2023, when a man identified as DZ was sentenced in Romania to seven years in prison. A Romanian court issued a European arrest warrant in January 2024 so that he could serve the sentence there.
DZ, who was in the Netherlands, contested his surrender before the Amsterdam District Court, arguing the penalty was disproportionate. According to Spanish news agency Europa Press, the Dutch court found the drugs had been intended for his wife, who used them as painkillers, and that the couple had no plans to sell them.
The Dutch judges noted that a comparable offence would carry between one and three weeks in prison in the Netherlands. Romanian law at the time set a minimum of seven years for that type of offence, according to the CJEU.
Romania has since raised that minimum to 10 years, according to legal blog Verfassungsblog. The Amsterdam court asked the EU judges whether it could refuse the handover on the grounds that the sentence breached the principle of proportionality of criminal offences and penalties set out in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.
The CJEU replied that the principles of mutual trust and mutual recognition oblige EU countries to presume that other member states respect fundamental rights. Allowing one national court to second-guess sentences handed down in another would give it a general power to review foreign criminal rulings, the judges said.
The court left a narrow exception. A surrender could still be refused where the issuing country’s law or judicial practice revealed a manifest and serious breach of proportionality that no effective remedy could put right.
That could be the case where national rules allowed inhuman or degrading punishment or stopped judges weighing the seriousness of an offence and the circumstances of the accused. In DZ’s case, the CJEU found that Romanian legislation showed no such failing.
The final decision on his surrender now rests with the Amsterdam court. In September 2025, the court ruled that Italian judges could not unilaterally refuse to surrender a convicted man to Romania.
