Language of document :

Request for a preliminary ruling from the Cour de cassation (France) lodged on 16 March 2021 – Procureur général près la cour d’appel d’Angers v KL

(Case C-168/21)

Language of the case: French

Referring court

Cour de cassation

Parties to the main proceedings

Appellant in the appeal on a point of law: Procureur général près la cour d’appel d’Angers

Respondent in the appeal on a point of law: KL

Questions referred

Must Articles 2(4) and 4(1) of Framework Decision 2002/584 1 be interpreted as meaning that the condition of double criminality is met in a situation, such as that at issue in the main proceedings, in which surrender is sought for acts which, in the issuing State, have been categorised as devastation and looting and which consist of acts of devastation and looting such as to cause a breach of the public peace when, in the executing State, there are criminal offences of theft accompanied by damage or offences of causing destruction or damage that do not require that element of a breach of the public peace?

In the event that the first question is answered in the affirmative, must Articles 2(4) and 4(1) of Framework Decision 2002/584 be interpreted as meaning that the courts in the executing State may refuse to execute a European arrest warrant issued for the enforcement of a sentence where they find that the judicial authorities in the issuing State imposed that sentence on the person concerned for the commission of a single offence covering various acts and where only some of those acts constitute a criminal offence in the executing State? Does a distinction need to be made depending on whether or not the trial court in the issuing State considered those various acts to be divisible or indivisible?

Does Article 49(3) of the Charter of Fundamental Rights require the judicial authorities in the executing Member State to refuse to execute a European arrest warrant where, first, that warrant was issued in order to enforce a single sentence imposed for a single offence and, second, where, given that some of the acts for which that sentence was imposed do not constitute an offence under the law of the executing Member State, a surrender can only be ordered in relation to some of those acts?

____________

1 Council Framework Decision 2002/584/JHA of 13 June 2002 on the European arrest warrant and the surrender procedures between Member States (OJ 2002 L 190, p. 1).