AC-2023-LON-001921 - [2025] EWHC 1416 (Admin)

Fecha: 16-Oct-2025

Article 142-11 is a Duty

36.

That evaluative question triggers a duty. If the EMHA question is answered in the affirmative, there must then in French law be a one-for-one deduction. This is clear from the French Code. It is not undermined by any of the evidence. It has not been disputed. It was spelled out by Farbey J in Doga at §4, when she said (emphasis added):

It is not in dispute … that, as a matter of French law, one day under an electronically monitored house arrest (“EMHA”) must be treated as one day of imprisonment, which must be deducted from the sentence of a person extradited from the United Kingdom. The dispute before me is whether the period of EMC should be treated as a corresponding period of EMHA under French law.

37.

Where there is assessed to be EMHA, the one-for-one deduction will follow. And where the days on EMHA exceed the length of the prison sentence, the sentence is served. It is extinguished. Qualifying Remand is not therefore like “early release”, where an individual may be released on licence conditions, during the remainder of their prison sentence. That distinction, and the existence of the duty, distinguish the present context from the current controversy about a foreign early release discretion (as to which, see Galicki v Poland [2025] EWHC 811 (Admin) at §§21-26). This explains the logical consistency in Farbey J’s decisions about French Qualifying Remand (Doga) and about Polish early release (see Dablewski v Poland [2024] EWHC 957 (Admin) at §50). The Courts in A and Doga saw the present issue as being concerned with whether a requested person has served their sentence (A at §§4-42; Doga at §22). Although that was by reason of a Qualifying Curfew (restriction of liberty) under foreign domestic law, it was approached in the same way as qualifying remand in custody (deprivation of liberty) under the Article 26/624 mechanism and Newman, in a “very clear cut case” (A at §39).