Van Mansart & Anor v Public Prosecutor's Office, East Flanders (Belgium)

An executing court should read a European arrest warrant as a whole. It should ordinarily accept the issuing state's categorisation of conduct unless there is an obvious inconsistency showing that the conduct cannot constitute the stated offence under the issuing state's law. The warrant need not map onto an English offence in every respect, and the issuing state need not negate every possible English defence or exception. Under Article 8, the court must assess the competing public and private interests, including the effects of extradition on children, pregnancy and mental health. An appellate court should not interfere where the judge considered the material factors and reached a decision reasonably open on the evidence.

Four European arrest warrants sought the surrender of Johan van Mansart and Gina de Wulf to Belgium. The warrants concerned sentences imposed after convictions in their absence for business-related fraud, forgery and related offences.

At Westminster Magistrates’ Court, the District Judge ordered Mr van Mansart’s extradition but discharged Ms de Wulf under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights because of the exceptional impact on the family. Mr van Mansart challenged the extradition order, and the Belgian judicial authority challenged Ms de Wulf’s discharge. The central issues were whether the warrants adequately particularised the relevant offences and whether extradition was compatible with Article 8.

1. Mr van Mansart’s application refused. The warrant was to be read as a whole. Although it did not expressly identify which individual offences fell within the framework-list categories of fraud and swindling, the descriptions of offences 2 and 6 sufficiently implied that categorisation. The District Judge was entitled to accept it under section 65(5) of the Extradition Act 2003.
2. For offence 9, the warrant described failures to provide the receiver with legally required information. That conduct fell within the parameters of section 353(1) of the Insolvency Act 1986. The issuing state was not required to establish that no exception under section 353(2) could possibly apply. Extradition law did not require the foreign offence to map onto the domestic offence in every respect.
3. The description of the Belgian partnership as a company did not make the warrant defective. The fact that partnerships and companies are distinct concepts in English law did not establish that they were distinct under Belgian law.
4. The Article 8 challenge failed. Reading the District Judge’s decision as a whole, he had considered the requested persons’ mental health, the children’s welfare, pregnancy, separation, the seriousness of the offences, the public interest in extradition and the fugitive issue. His assessment of the competing factors was open to him. Any omission to state a factor expressly in the summary was immaterial.
5. The Belgian judicial authority’s application refused. The District Judge had taken into account both the authority’s consideration of whether to seek only one parent and Ms de Wulf’s fugitive status. Those factors were outweighed by the exceptionally severe impact of extraditing both parents on the four children and unborn child. The decision to discharge Ms de Wulf was properly open to the judge.

1. Westminster Magistrates’ Court: the District Judge ordered Mr van Mansart’s extradition and discharged Ms de Wulf under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
2. High Court (Administrative Court): both applications for permission to appeal were refused.