Ramona Strugariu (Renew Europe, Romanian) presented her opinion on the anti-SLAPPs directive to the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties (LIBE) on Wednesday 22 March. In particular, she calls for an early dismissal mechanism to be available to everyone and for the scope to be broadened.
Early dismissal for all
Indeed, Ms Strugariu, the rapporteur on the matter, called for “abandoning the [European] Commission dichotomy between manifestly unfounded and abusive cases” where only the former can benefit from the mechanism of the early dismissal of the complaint. However, in Ms Strugariu’s view, the mechanism must be “made accessible to all victims” of SLAPPs.
“While SLAPPs can be manifestly unfounded claims, in practice, the initiators make use of highly skilled lawyers who sometimes eventually demonstrate more legal merits”, she explained. She also pointed out that elements such as the use of “dilatory practices, vexatious litigation and multiple claims or excessive damage claims” can themselves indicate the existence of a SLAPP.
However, she clarified that, while the burden of proof is on the claimant, he or she only needs to establish the merits of the complaint (“fumus boni juris” or “prima facie”) to avoid dismissal. “As SLAPPs initiators make an abusive use of court proceedings, deleting the dichotomy does not infringe on the right to access to justice”, she said.
In response, a Commission representative present at the debate recalled that “early dismissal is meant to take place very early in the proceedings […] and assessing abuse usually requires examination”, adding that the original text provides “safeguards against abusive court proceedings”.
Public debate in a broad sense
Furthermore, Ms Strugariu proposed increasing the scope of the directive. In practice, she wishes to broaden the definition of “public debate” to include activities carried out in the exercise of certain rights in addition to freedom of expression and information, such as freedom of association, academic freedom and media freedom.
Finally, she welcomed the focus of the Committee on Legal Affairs’ report, “especially on remedies and what constitutes a cross-border SLAPP”, issues over which LIBE has no competence (see EUROPE 13146/22).
With the exception of the ECR and ID groups, who did not speak, all political groups supported the “direction” of the draft opinion and the amendments contained in the JURI report.
To read the draft opinion: https://aeur.eu/f/5xr (Original version in French by Hélène Seynaeve)