FRC member, Sibel Top, and FRC co-director, prof. Paul De Hert, have published the article 'Castaño avoids a clash between the ECtHR and the CJEU, but erodes Soering. Thinking human rights transnationally' in the New Journal of European Criminal Law.
The article examines the changing balance established by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) between human rights filters to extradition and the obligation to cooperate and how this shift of rationale brought the Court closer to the position of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in that respect. The article argues that the ECtHR initially adopted a position whereby it prioritised human rights concerns over extraditions, but that it later nuanced that approach by establishing, in some cases, an obligation to cooperate to ensure proper respect of human rights. This refinement of its position brought the ECtHR closer to the approach adopted by the CJEU that traditionally put the obligation to cooperate above human rights concerns. In recent years, however, the CJEU also backtracked to some extent from its uncompromising attitude on the obligation to cooperate, which enabled a convergence of the rationales of the two Courts. Although this alignment of the Courts was necessary to mitigate the conflicting obligations of European Union Member States towards both Courts, this article warns against the danger of making too many human rights concessions to cooperation in criminal matters.
For accessing the open access PDF:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2032284420979746