Florea, R (on the application of) v Authority of Care Courthouse Saru

Specific and reliable assurances given by a requesting state may eliminate a real risk of treatment contrary to Article 3 ECHR. The court must assess the assurances in their practical and legal context, including their precision, source, personal application, enforceability, monitoring arrangements and the relationship between the states. A national enforcement mechanism under the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture is not a minimum requirement where other monitoring arrangements are practical and effective. The court is concerned with reducing the identified Article 3 risk to the point of practical elimination. It need not determine the requesting state’s domestic prison-allocation law or predict general prison conditions where the assurances adequately address the individual risk.

The claimant challenged his return to Romania to serve a three-year sentence. In the earlier decision, the Administrative Court identified a real risk of breach of Article 3 ECHR if he were detained in overcrowded conditions, particularly where personal space was two square metres or less, and sought assurances.

Romania subsequently clarified that the claimant might initially be placed in closed conditions and later transferred to semi-open conditions. The Romanian Ministry of Justice gave assurances concerning particular prisons and minimum personal-space standards. The claimant challenged their precision, reliability and monitoring arrangements. The issue was whether the assurances eliminated the substantial grounds for believing that return would expose him to a real risk of Article 3 ill-treatment.

1. Outcome. The appeal was dismissed. The only barrier to extradition identified in the earlier judgment was the risk arising from prison overcrowding, and that risk had been sufficiently addressed.
2. The assurances were sufficiently precise and reliable. They were given by the Romanian Ministry of Justice on behalf of the Romanian Government, were personal to the claimant, identified prisons and minimum personal-space standards, and were capable of being communicated to and respected by the prison administration.
3. The assurances had to be read as a whole. They covered both possible closed-regime detention and later semi-open or open detention. The court was not seeking an assurance that the claimant would remain in semi-open conditions throughout his sentence. It required adequate personal space in whichever regime applied.
4. The court’s assessment was confined to overcrowding. It was not required to adjudicate prospectively on every aspect of Romanian prison conditions, determine the proper interpretation of Romanian allocation law, or predict general occupancy levels over the next three years. Any ambiguity in Romanian law concerning the initial allocation was principally a matter for the Romanian authorities and courts.
5. Applying the criteria in Othman v United Kingdom, 17 January 2012, the assurances were disclosed, specific, state-level assurances concerning lawful prison allocation, and Romania could reasonably be expected to comply with them. Romania’s status as a Council of Europe and ECHR state, its relationship with the United Kingdom, and the absence of prior ill-treatment or past failures of assurances supported reliability.
6. Effective monitoring did not require Romania to have established a national preventive mechanism under the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture. The Romanian ombudsman, Helsinki Committee, sentence-supervising judge and the European Court of Human Rights together provided practical and effective monitoring.
7. The assurances therefore reduced the Article 3 risk to the point of practical elimination. Extradition could proceed.

1. High Court (Administrative Court): In the earlier decision, [2014] EWHC 2528 (Admin), the court considered the risk from Romanian prison overcrowding and required assurances concerning personal space.
2. High Court (Administrative Court): The present court considered the subsequent Romanian assurances and dismissed the appeal.