On Wednesday 1 March, MEP Aléxis Georgoúlis (The Left, Greek) presented a first version of his opinion on the directive to combat SLAPPs (see EUROPE 12940/16) to the European Parliament’s Committee on Culture (CULT).
Among other things, he proposed removing the distinction between “abusive” and “manifestly unfounded” lawsuits. While the latter criterion is used to assess whether a procedure can be dismissed quickly (“early dismissal mechanism”), for a representative of the European Commission present at the debate, the distinction is justified. “Early dismissals are meant to happen right at the beginning of the proceedings, and for that it needs to be blatantly clear to the court that the proceedings should not go on. However the abusive elements often come up later on, when the case is assessed”, she said.
Indeed, while important to MEPs, the early dismissal mechanism has been resisted by Member States, who have hammered home the need to maintain a balance between protecting SLAPP targets and access to justice (see EUROPE 13081/18).
Mr Georgoúlis, supported by the S&D and Renew Europe groups, also called for an extension of the scope of the directive to artists and anyone affected by SLAPPs. For the Commission, however, the proposal already covers a broad spectrum of legal or natural persons “as it provides protection on the basis of activity” and not on the basis of status or occupation.
Finally, the members of the CULT Committee, like those of the Committee on Legal Affairs (JURI) who are responsible for the report (see EUROPE 13130/15), are in favour of a broad understanding of the “cross-border case” notion, taking into account borders broken down by the digital space.
To read the draft opinion: https://aeur.eu/f/5kb (Original version in French by Hélène Seynaeve)