EU Court LM judgment on Poland rule of law is major advance & opens door to widespread refusals of extradition. Thread. 1/9
The excellent @Verfassungsblog had a pessimistic read of last week’s judgment. I don’t agree 2/
Case concerns whether Irish Court can extradite to Poland given loss of independence of courts there. see my thread. 3/
CJEU did *formally* apply 2-stage test for blocking extradition it has developed for prison conditions: 1st general & 2nd extraditee-specific 4/
But CJEU’s reasoning on stage 2 makes clear national courts can base this entirely on systemic problems - as long as they apply to the *courts* which will try extraditee. 5/
And CJEU rejected Adv-Gen advice to require a real risk of a *flagrant* breach of right to fair trial - even though ECHR requires that. 6/
Since EU Treaty only allows Council to suspend system of EU arrest warrants, CJEU could hardly justify *Commission* findings for this as enough. 7/
So instead, CJEU upheld a wide-open second stage, giving national courts full power to use their own assessment, including Commission’s findings, to block extradition. 8/
The LM case will now be ruled on by the Irish High Court. So we must still watch this space. 9/9
