The recognition and enforcement of a Romanian criminal decision by a member state of the European Union

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to analyse the main mechanism of international cooperation among the Member States of the European Union, specifically the recognition and execution of judicial decisions in situations where Romania is the issuing state of a final conviction decision, and another member state of the European Union is where the decision will be executed.

With the creation of the European Common Space, which established among other things the freedom of movement of persons between states, legal issues have also arisen regarding the possibility of defendants leaving the country in which they are judged and making the execution of a warrant by the issuing state of the conviction decision much more difficult. Defendants chose to go to other countries with the aim of being harder to find and not serving their sentences in prison, eventually leading to the statute of limitations on the execution of the sentence.

Consequently, to combat such behaviours, Union-level mechanisms of effective cooperation between states have been developed to lead to the capture of those convicted for the execution of sentences even in the states where they are located. Thus, over time, the conditions in which these mechanisms can function most efficiently have been outlined, and through Framework Decisions, a series of minimum rules that states must regulate at the national level have been established. Through these instruments, efforts are made to ensure the respect of all fundamental rights of individuals and their ability to serve their sentence in the Member State of which they are citizens, creating a more favourable environment for rehabilitation and social reintegration due to them belonging to that place.

In this article, we will examine the exact manner in which the Romanian legislator has transposed the Framework Decision 2008/909/JHA on the application of the principle of mutual recognition in the case of judicial decisions in criminal matters imposing sentences or measures involving deprivation of liberty for their execution in the European Union, and what are the differences between what has been imposed at the European level and what we have regulated, as well as the necessary conditions for the recognition and execution of a Romanian criminal decision by other states. Finally, we will outline in detail the effects of such a procedure and also the possibility of incidental recognition, in the situation of the refusal by the state where the convicted person is located to execute the European arrest warrant issued for that person by the Romanian authorities.