Boothnesse: The CJEU Defines the Limits of Speciality as a Bar to Surrender

In a judgment delivered on 23 April 2026 (C-528/24, Boothnesse), the EU Court of Justice held that, under the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement, the mere possibility that the requesting State may breach of the rule of speciality does not, in itself, justify refusal of surrender. What matters is whether that feared breach gives rise to a real risk of a violation of fundamental rights.

The case arose from proceedings before the Irish Supreme Court concerning three individuals sought by the United Kingdom for fraud-related offences. Their objection focused on an earlier six-month imprisonment sentence imposed in the UK for contempt of court linked to the breach of asset freezing orders. That contempt had been treated under English law as a civil, rather than criminal, matter and had therefore not been included in the surrender warrants. The requested persons argued that surrender should therefore be refused because, once returned, they might be made to also serve that six-month term in breach of the speciality rule in Article 625 TCA.

The Court seemingly rejected that argument, or at least its strongest version.

First, the Court held that Article 625 TCA is not a ground for refusal of surrender. Having regard to the text, structure and purpose of the TCA, the Court stressed that Article 625 TCA is essentially directed to what may happen after surrender, and primarily to the conduct of the issuing State and does not confer on the executing State a power, or a duty, to refuse surrender in order to pre-empt a future breach of speciality (paras. 27-37).

Second, the Court reinforced that conclusion by emphasizing that the breach of speciality is not among the grounds for refusing execution of an arrest warrant under Articles 600 and 601 TCA (para. 38). Nor do those provisions refer back to Article 625. The Court also relied on the objective of the TCA surrender system: if executing authorities had to assess in every case whether the issuing State might later comply with all TCA rules in practice, the efficiency of the surrender mechanism would be seriously undermined (paras. 39-42).

However, that is not the end of the matter.

The CJEU draws an important distinction between speciality as such and the fundamental rights consequences that a breach of speciality may entail. Articles 524(2) and 604(c) TCA preserve the duty of Member States to respect fundamental rights when deciding on surrender. That means that an executing judicial authority cannot surrender a person where, after a specific and precise examination, there are valid reasons to believe that surrender would expose that person to a real risk of a breach of fundamental rights.

So the real question is whether a feared breach of speciality may give rise to such a risk.

The Court’s answer is nuanced. It states that the speciality rule is not itself a fundamental right. It is not mentioned in the Charter, does not flow directly from a Charter right or general principle of EU law, and the structure of Article 625 itself shows that the TCA parties did not treat it as having the same status as a fundamental right. The CJEU points in particular to two features: (i) Article 625(1) allows the parties to presume consent to derogations from speciality; and (ii) Article 625(4) obliges the executing judicial authority, in certain circumstances, to consent to a derogation after surrender. That architecture would be difficult to reconcile with the idea that speciality is itself a fundamental right.

At the same time, the Court also says that speciality remains a procedural guarantee conferred by Union law. And this is where Article 47 of the Charter comes into play. The requested person must have an effective remedy in the issuing State to complain, after surrender, that the speciality rule has been breached and to seek to prevent prosecution, sentencing or detention contrary to Article 625. In other words: speciality is not a fundamental right, but the ability to invoke it effectively before a court is protected by the right to an effective remedy.  

In line with its broader approach in the context of the EAW, the CJEU clarified – from a methodological standpoint – that if the executing judicial authority has doubts about the existence or effectiveness of those remedies, it cannot simply refuse surrender but must first request information from the issuing judicial authority and then, if necessary, seek additional guarantees.

So what is the key takeaway from Boothnesse?

In a nutshell, that, under the TCA, a speciality argument will not succeed merely by showing that there is some prospect that, after surrender, the requested person could be dealt with for another pre-surrender matter. The defence must show that this foreseeable breach of speciality would lead to a real risk of a breach of fundamental rights, particularly where the issuing State fails to offer an effective judicial remedy to challenge any later breach of speciality.

The first limb of that reasoning is broadly consistent with the long-standing approach of the Italian Supreme Court in the EAW context. The Court of Cassation has repeatedly held that the failure to verify in advance whether the issuing State will comply with the speciality rule does not invalidate the surrender decision (see, for example, Court of Cassation, Division VI, judgments no. 9202 of 28 February 2007 and no. 25421 of 28 July 2007). The real novelty lies in the second limb of the judgment, where the Court links the operation of the speciality rule as a potential bar to surrender to the availability of effective judicial protection under fundamental-rights standards, although the threshold for such an objection appears particularly demanding in practice.