Ionut Bucur v Fifth District Court of Bucharest, Romania

On an appeal under section 27 of the Extradition Act 2003, the court does not conduct a fresh proportionality assessment. It asks whether the extradition judge was wrong in principle or reached a conclusion outside the range reasonably available.

In an Article 8 challenge to extradition following conviction, interference with private or family life must be exceptionally severe before it can outweigh the constant and weighty public interest in surrender. Where the person is properly found to be a fugitive, the public interest carries still greater weight. Open residence, employment and contact with UK authorities do not, without more, negate fugitivity. New family circumstances must be assessed, but ordinary consequences of extradition, including absence from a child’s birth, will not ordinarily meet the exceptional-severity threshold.

The applicant, a Romanian national, sought renewal of his application for permission to appeal against an extradition order made by District Judge Grego at Westminster Magistrates’ Court. Romania sought his surrender to serve the unexpired balance of a sentence imposed for drug trafficking after his conditional release was revoked.

The District Judge rejected challenges under Articles 3 and 8 ECHR. He found that the applicant was a fugitive because he left Romania without maintaining contact with the authorities and had failed to disclose his conviction in a later UK immigration application. He concluded that his family and private life consequences were not exceptionally severe when weighed against the public interest in extradition.

The renewed application challenged the fugitivity finding, the proportionality assessment and the treatment of subsequent circumstances, including the applicant’s marriage, his wife’s pregnancy and his mother’s ill health.

1. The renewed application was refused. The applicant had not shown an arguable error of principle, or that the District Judge reached a conclusion outside the range reasonably available to him.
2. Under section 27 of the Extradition Act 2003, the appellate court does not conduct a fresh Article 8 balancing exercise or substitute its own evaluation of proportionality. Its task is to decide whether the extradition judge was wrong in concluding that surrender was compatible with Article 8 ECHR.
3. The District Judge was entitled to find fugitivity. The applicant knew that conditions attached to his conditional release, left Romania without notifying the authorities, failed to keep them informed of his whereabouts and had made a later UK settlement application which could support an inference of concealment. Those factual findings were plainly open to the Judge and should not be disturbed.
4. The approach in Makowska v Poland [2020] 4 WLR 161, including consideration of locational dynamism, informational deficit and intended consequential elusiveness, was appropriately applied. Those themes were not a rigid or exhaustive test.
5. The Article 8 assessment was rational and coherent. The consequences for the applicant’s family and private life were genuine and significant, but did not reach the exceptionally severe threshold required to outweigh the constant and weighty public interest in extradition. Once fugitivity was established, only the most compelling circumstances could justify disproportionality.
6. The applicant’s new marriage, his wife’s pregnancy and his mother’s deteriorating health would not arguably have altered the result. A short adjournment to permit attendance at the birth was refused because the relevant impact was a normal consequence of extradition, not an exceptionally severe one.

• High Court (Administrative Court): the renewed application under sections 26 and 27 of the Extradition Act 2003 was refused.
• Westminster Magistrates’ Court: District Judge Grego ordered extradition on 18 June 2025 after rejecting the Article 3 and Article 8 challenges.
• Permission stage: Mr Justice Johnson refused permission on the papers by order dated 5 January 2026.