Case C-798/26, Casres – one offence on the cover, three inside
A European arrest warrant is a form, and forms can contradict themselves. The Qorti tal-Maġistrati in Malta asks what follows when one does — and who, if anyone, has to fix it.
Facts
B.M. is the subject of a European arrest warrant being executed before the Qorti tal-Maġistrati, Malta’s magistrates’ court. The issuing authority stated that the warrant had been issued for one offence. In the same warrant it ticked two of the offences listed in Article 2(2) of Framework Decision 2002/584/JHA — the list for which surrender is granted without verification of double criminality — and added a further offence that is not on that list. The Maltese court, as executing authority, asks whether a warrant in that state satisfies Article 8(1)(d) of the Framework Decision; if it does, for which offences the rule of speciality applies; and if it does not, whether the executing side must ask for it to be amended. The notice gives no further facts, and does not name the issuing State. (Casres is a fictitious name assigned under the Court’s anonymisation practice; it does not correspond to any party. The case is in English, so the questions below are the authentic text.)
Questions Referred
1. In light of the formalities required by Article 8(1)(d) of the Council Framework Decision of 13 June 2002 on the European Arrest Warrant and the surrender procedures between Member States (2002/584/JHA) can a European Arrest Warrant be considered as legally valid if the Requesting Authority indicated that it has been issued for one offence and where the same Requesting Authority ticks two scheduled offences and adds a further non-scheduled offence in the same European Arrest Warrant?
2. If the reply to the first question above is in the affirmative, for which offence(s) is the Referring Court bound to ensure the rule of speciality? In other words, if the European Arrest Warrant is to be considered as legally valid, should the Referring Court apply the rule of speciality for all offences indicated, notwithstanding that the Requesting Authority indicated that the European Arrest Warrant has been issued for one offence?
3. If the reply to the first question above is in the negative, is the Referring Court, or the Requested Authority, under an obligation to request the Requesting Authority to amend and correct the European Arrest Warrant such that it clearly and precisely reflects the number and type of offences for which the European Arrest Warrant was originally intended?
Sources
OJ notice C/2026/4684 (EUR‑Lex) · Case file on CURIA · Framework Decision 2002/584/JHA
Comment
The discrepancy looks clerical, but each version of the warrant produces a different surrender. Article 8(1)(d) requires a warrant to state “the nature and legal classification of the offence, particularly in respect of Article 2”, and Article 2 is where the consequences sit. For the listed offences in Article 2(2), surrender follows “without verification of the double criminality of the act”; for anything else, Article 2(4) allows the executing State to insist that the acts are also an offence under its own law. A warrant that claims one offence, ticks two listed ones and adds an unlisted one leaves the executing court unable to tell which regime it is applying — and therefore what it is actually being asked to authorise.
The third question has, in substance, already been answered, and the answer favours asking over refusing. In Case C‑241/15, Bob‑Dogi (ECLI:EU:C:2016:385) the warrant was defective under the neighbouring point, Article 8(1)(c), because it did not refer to any national arrest warrant. The Court held that refusal was possible, but that before refusing — a decision that “must remain the exception” in a system built on mutual recognition — the executing authority must use Article 15(2) and request the necessary supplementary information “as a matter of urgency”. Article 15(2) names Article 8 expressly. There is no obvious reason why point (d) should be treated differently from point (c). What the Maltese court calls a request “to amend and correct” the warrant is, in the Framework Decision’s own terms, a request for the information the warrant failed to give — and the Court is likely to say the executing court must make it, rather than choose between accepting the defective warrant and rejecting it outright.
The second question is the more interesting one, because it concerns the person after surrender rather than the paperwork before it. Article 27(2) protects a surrendered person from being “prosecuted, sentenced or otherwise deprived of his or her liberty for an offence committed prior to his or her surrender other than that for which he or she was surrendered”. Whether an offence is “other” depends, following Case C‑388/08 PPU, Leymann and Pustovarov (ECLI:EU:C:2008:669), on whether its constituent elements are those for which the person was surrendered and whether there is “a sufficient correspondence between the information given in the arrest warrant” and the later charge. That test assumes the warrant says one thing. Here it says two. If the executing court treats the warrant as covering all three offences, speciality protects the person from nothing beyond them; if it takes the issuing authority at its word that there is only one, the other two become offences for which consent under Article 27(4) would be needed. Which reading prevails determines what B.M. can later be tried for — and it is the issuing authority’s own inconsistency that creates the choice.
Readers following the Court’s recent arrest-warrant work will note the contrast with Blerens (C‑446/26), answered by reasoned order in July. There the question was who must review a warrant; here it is what a warrant must say. Both turn on how much the executing court is entitled to take on trust.