JZ v Prokuratura Rejonowa Łódź – Śródmieście

The Member State that issued a European arrest warrant is required to consider, for the purposes of deducting the period of detention served in the executing Member State, whether the measures taken against the person concerned in the executing State have the effect of depriving a person of liberty.

In this judgment, the Court observes that the concept of ‘detention’, which appears in the Framework Decision, is an autonomous concept of EU law that must be interpreted uniformly throughout the EU. Within the meaning of the Framework Decision, it refers not to a measure that is restrictive of liberty but to one that deprives a person of it, and covers not only imprisonment but also any measure or set of measures imposed on the person concerned which, on account of the type of measure, duration, effects and means of implementation deprive the person concerned of his liberty in a way that is comparable to imprisonment.

Therefore, a nine hour daily curfew monitored by means of an electronic tag does not, in principle, have that effect.

However, in so far as the Framework Decision merely imposes a minimum level of protection of the fundamental rights of a person subject to a European arrest warrant, the Framework Decision does not preclude the judicial authority of the Member State that issued the warrant from being able, on the basis of national law alone, to deduct from the total period of detention all or part of the period during which that person was subject, in the executing Member State, to measures involving not a deprivation of liberty but a restriction of it.

Source: Court of Justice of the European Union, Press release No 83/16, Luxembourg, 28 July 2016