Harsh drug sentence can’t stop Dutch court from handing man over to Romania

EU judges said countries could block the streamlined extradition process over grossly excessive punishment, but they found Romania’s sentencing safeguards left no grounds to refuse.(CN) — Seven years in prison for four ecstasy pills and three grams of cannabis was not, in itself, enough to stop a cross-border handover, the EU’s top court ruled Tuesday.DZ, sentenced in Romania, challenged his surrender from the Netherlands, arguing his punishment was disproportionate. The Amsterdam District Court asked the Court of Justice of the European Union whether EU fundamental rights allowed it to block the transfer.The EU judges said such refusals were possible only in exceptional circumstances. Before examining an individual’s risk, courts must find wider failings in the requesting country’s laws or judicial practices, affecting the system generally or an identifiable group. Those failings must seriously breach the requirement that punishment fit the crime, with no effective court remedy.That threshold could be met where laws permitted sentences amounting to inhuman or degrading punishment, the judges noted, or prevented judges from considering the seriousness of an offense and adjusting penalties to individual circumstances.A lighter sentence elsewhere was insufficient.“In the absence of complete harmonization of substantive criminal law rules, the choices in the area of criminal policy of the executing member state may depart significantly from the choices made in that area by the issuing member state,” the court said.Romanian law allowed judges to consider individual circumstances and reduce sentences below the statutory minimum, the court found. DZ had also used the available appeals. The judges therefore said the sentencing objection could not justify refusing his handover.Ermioni Xanthopoulou, associate professor of law at Brunel University of London, said the court had balanced rights and cooperation carefully. Letting judges routinely scrutinize another country’s sentencing policy would undermine mutual trust, she said, but that trust could not excuse manifestly disproportionate punishment arising from systemic deficiencies without an effective judicial remedy. She agreed with the assessment of Romania’s safeguards.“Proving systemic deficiencies on the first level and then their effect on the requested person, on a second level, is challenging,” she said.DZ told the Dutch court the drugs were for his wife, who used them for pain relief. The court noted that neither intended to traffic them. Yet Romania’s seven-year minimum contrasted sharply with the one to three weeks Dutch prosecutors said importing up to 10 grams of the relevant drug category would attract in the Netherlands.Romanian authorities issued the warrant in January 2024, after the sentence became final the month before. Operating since 2004, European arrest warrants replaced lengthy extradition procedures within the EU with a faster system built on countries recognizing each other’s judicial decisions.Amedeo Barletta, an Italian criminal defense lawyer and vice chair of the European Criminal Bar Association, welcomed the opening to scrutiny but questioned whom it would protect. “A manifestly disproportionate sentence may result from an individual judicial decision, even within a legal system that does not suffer from systemic deficiencies,” he said.Barletta noted that questioning excessive punishment could strengthen trust by encouraging countries to reconsider rigid sentencing rules and learn from each other. He said there would be no need to set identical penalties across Europe or make the chamber handling a handover into an appeals court.The judges barred a fresh examination of the Romanian conviction and left the assessment of mitigating circumstances to Romania’s courts. DZ had already challenged his sentence on appeal and through a further appeal on a point of law.Dan Helenius, professor of criminal and procedural law at the University of Helsinki, questioned how much protection the ruling added, basing his comments on the court’s news release. Refusal over inhuman punishment was already possible, he said; what remained unclear was which excessive sentences below that threshold would qualify. “So, the threshold is put fairly high for refusal,” he said.Gianmarco Bondi, an Italian criminal defense lawyer specializing in extradition and European criminal law, welcomed the ruling’s recognition that judges handling surrender requests could scrutinize excessive sentences. “The difficulty lies in how the established test works,” he said. The existence of sentencing discretion and appeals did not mean they had actually protected DZ from an excessive punishment, he argued.Bondi called for a more direct comparison between the crime and the punishment, taking account of rehabilitation and alternatives to prison. He questioned whether sentence reductions for admitting guilt or cooperating with authorities truly reflected the seriousness of the offense. He also noted that seeking further information and assurances from Romania could help establish whether the sentence could be reviewed or reduced.DZ’s lawyer and the Dutch Public Prosecutor’s Office did not respond to requests for comment.The European ruling cannot be appealed. Amsterdam must now decide whether to surrender DZ, bound by the judges’ answer: The sentencing objection examined here cannot stop his handover.Courthouse News reporter Eunseo Hong is based in the Netherlands.Subscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads