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

The EJA has legal responsibilities of its own. Article 26/624 forms part of the extradition arrangement between the IJA (France) and the EJA (the UK). The Article 26/624 deduction is the post-extradition function of the IJA. And yet the requested person’s entitlement to have that deduction made can become a matter of direct concern for the EJA. The answer is the same one as was given by the Divisional Court in A at §39. The UK court as EJA itself has “an obligation not to act in such a way as to cause a disproportionate interference with the relevant ECHR rights of a person whose extradition is being sought”. The “question whether the Appellant has served his sentence” can be “directly relevant and necessary for the English court to consider in order to guard against it breaching its primary obligations to a person who is subject to an extradition request” (see A at §40).

So, where the requested person has been remanded in custody and in detention (deprived of their liberty), the EJA’s assessment of Article 8 proportionality may have regard to the period which left to be served when Qualifying Remand is deducted: see Dobrowolski v Poland [2023] EWHC 763 (Admin) at §§7-8. That does not mean an appeal will succeed simply because only a period of a few weeks remains to be served; nor does it mean that the question for the extradition court becomes whether the requested person “has or has not served enough of” the sentence: see Molik v Poland [2020] EWHC 2836 (Admin) at §11. It does mean, however, that there is a bright-line once the period of qualifying remand in custody (detention) reaches the same duration as the sentence of imprisonment in respect of which extradition is sought. In that situation, for the purposes of the Article 26/624, the requested person will be entitled to have their sentence recognised by the IJA as being served in full. Where that bright-line point is imminent, the Court can make a deferred discharge order: Molik at §18. Where the bright-line has already been crossed, the answer is to discharge the requested person. That is so whether or not the IJA agrees to withdraw the ExAW. It is so whether the IJA maintains that extradition should take place so that it can exercise its “prerogative” under the Article 26/614 mechanism.

As the Divisional Court explained in Newman v Poland [2012] EWHC 2931 at §19: