June 16, 2020
By Dragoș Călin In the recent judgment in the case Kövesi v. Romania (application no. 3594/19) the European Court of Human Rights held, unanimously, that there had been a violation of Article 6 § 1 (right to a fair trial) and Article 10 (right to freedom of expression) of the European Convention on Human Rights […]
May 15, 2020
Guest Blogger: Nina de Puy Kamp, Paralegal at Leigh Day Solicitors, London UK* Hungary’s Media Act 2010 (the Act) garnered much criticism for its chilling effects on free speech (UN, OSCE, EU, HRW). The Act establishes a media regulator (appointed by the ruling party) to inter alia prohibit and impose fines for ‘imbalanced coverage’ and […]
April 10, 2020
Dirk Voorhoof (Human Rights Centre, Ghent University and Legal Human Academy) On 18 June 2015, Strasbourg Observers published our blog post ‘Delfi AS v. Estonia: Grand Chamber confirms liability of online news portal for offensive comments posted by its readers’. It situated and commented the Grand Chamber judgment of 16 June 2015 in the first case […]
March 23, 2020
By Dirk Voorhoof and Ronan Ó Fathaigh In the case of Studio Monitori and Others v. Georgia the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in its judgment of 30 January 2020 has confirmed that the right to freedom of expression and information as guaranteed by Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) […]
March 16, 2020
By Dr. Petra Gyöngyi (Postdoctoral fellow at the University of Oslo, member of Judges under Stress – The Breaking Point of Judicial Institutions) On January 20, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) rendered a final decision in the case of Magyar Kétfarkú Kutya Párt (MKKP) v Hungary. The case concerned […]
December 19, 2019
By Ronan Ó Fathaigh and Dirk Voorhoof In Tagiyev and Huseynov v. Azerbaijan, the European Court of Human Rights unanimously held that the conviction and imprisonment of Azerbaijani journalist Rafig Nazir oglu Tagiye, and editor Samir Sadagat oglu Huseynov, for incitement to religious hatred, violated their right to freedom of expression under Article 10 ECHR. […]
December 16, 2019
By Massimo Frigo (Senior Legal Adviser of the International Commission of Jurists) On 14 October, the Supreme Court (Tribunal Supremo) of Spain convicted 12 people in connection with their part in the organisation on 1 October 2017 of a referendum on Catalonian independence, that was conducted despite having been declared illegal by the Constitutional Court. […]
November 19, 2019
Argyro Chatzinikolaou is a doctoral researcher and a member of the Law & Technology research group and the Human Rights Centre at Ghent University. She is currently working on the research project “Minors and online sexual acts: a study of legal qualifications and regulatory approaches from a children’s rights perspective”. In Pryanishnikov v Russia, a […]
November 04, 2019
By Dirk Voorhoof and Ronan Ó Fathaigh In Szurovecz v. Hungary, the European Court of Human Rights has held that a refusal to grant a journalist access to an asylum-seeker ‘reception centre’ in Hungary violated his right to freedom of expression under Article 10 ECHR. The ECtHR emphasised that newsgathering, including ‘first-hand’ observation by a […]
October 14, 2019
By Ronan Ó Fathaigh and Dirk Voorhoof The European Court’s Second Section recently found that criminal proceedings against the owner and the editor of a newspaper for having published statements by the leader of a terrorist organisation were justified and did not violate the right to freedom of expression. The Court in Gürbüz and Bayar […]
August 08, 2019
By Ronan Ó Fathaigh On 25 July 2019, the European Court of Human Rights delivered an important judgment in Brzeziński v. Poland, concerning a provision in Poland’s election law which allows a court, within 24 hours, to consider whether ‘untrue information’ has been published, and to issue an order prohibiting its further distribution. The European […]
May 17, 2019
This blogpost was written by Ronan Ó Fathaigh and Dirk Voorhoof On 30 April 2019, in Kablis v. Russia, the European Court’s Third Section unanimously found that the blocking by Russian authorities of an activist’s social networking account and entries on his blog had breached his right to freedom of expression under Article 10 ECHR. […]
January 23, 2019
This blog post was written by Ronan Ó Fathaigh and Dirk Voorhoof On 15 January 2019, the European Court’s Second Section unanimously found that an anti-corruption activist’s conviction for staging an “obscene” demonstration outside a prosecutor’s office, targeting a number of public officials, violated the activist’s freedom of expression. The Court in Mătăsaru v. the […]
November 26, 2018
By Sophia Sideridou (intern at the Human Rights Centre of Ghent University) On 30 October 2018, the European Court of Human Rights held unanimously that, in the case of Kaboglu and Oran v. Turkey, there has been a violation of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The applicants were two university professors […]
November 15, 2018
By Joanne Fish (University of Glasgow) In Tuskia and Others v. Georgia (11 October 2018) the European Court of Human Rights ruled on a case concerning a protest against university reforms by a group of academics at Tbilisi State University. The applicants are nine professors, six of which were members of the Grand Academic Council, […]
November 07, 2018
By Stijn Smet, Assistant Professor of Constitutional Law at Hasselt University In a recent judgment that has made headlines around the world, the ECtHR rules – not for the first time – that Austria can legitimately curb free speech to protect the religious feelings of believers. That the believers in E.S. v. Austria happened to […]
October 29, 2018
This blog post was written by Ronan Ó Fathaigh On 4 September 2018, the European Court of Human Rights delivered a unanimous judgment on Turkey’s controversial Article 301 insult law, and for the first time applied Article 46 of the European Convention, holding that amending the insult law would “constitute an appropriate form of execution” of […]
October 22, 2018
By Vigjilenca Abazi (fellow at Yale Law School) and Flutura Kusari (legal advisor at the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom) In April 2018, the European Commission put forward a much-anticipated ‘package of measures’ to strengthen whistleblower protection in the European Union. This includes a proposal for a Directive on the protection of persons […]
October 09, 2018
By Dirk Voorhoof (Human Rights Centre, Ghent University and Legal Human Academy) In Savva Terentyev v. Russia the ECtHR has applied a very high level of free speech-protection for aggressively insulting and hostile comments about police officers, published on a weblog. The ECtHR observes that some of the wording in the blog post was offensive, […]
September 11, 2018
By Dirk Voorhoof, Human Rights Centre, Ghent University and Legal Human Academy In its judgment of 17 July 2018 the ECtHR has found various violations of the rights of the members of the feminist punk band Pussy Riot. The ECtHR found violations under Article 3 (prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment), Article 5 § 3 […]