European Parliament’s Committee on Culture wants to extend scope of ‘anti-SLAPPs’ directive

The European Parliament’s Committee on Culture (CULT) adopted its opinion on the ‘anti-SLAPPs’directive (see EUROPE 13132/25) on Thursday 25 May with 22 votes in favour, 2 against and no abstentions.

The text suggests extending the scope to several entities potentially affected by abusive procedures, such as artists or researchers, as well as to acts of online public participation. It also proposes that ‘SLAPPs’ in progress at the time of entry into force of the directive should also benefit from the protections offered by the directive.

Finally, it adds that a case may be considered cross-border if the act in question is of interest to the public in several Member States or is accessible in several countries, in particular via the Internet.

However, contrary to the draft opinion, MEPs reinstated the distinction between “abusive” and “unfounded” lawsuits, removing only the requirement that it be “manifestly” abusive. Thus, according to the Commission’s proposal, only the latter could be subject to early rejection.

The opinion was the subject of 161 amendments, summarised in 37 compromise amendments, all of which were adopted. “We took the report under extraordinary circumstances and we had to do a lot of work in a very short time”, said Stélios Koúloglou (The Left, Greek) ahead of the vote.

In fact, Mr Koúloglou had to replace Aléxis Georgoúlis (The Left, Greek). Originally responsible for the ‘SLAPPs’ dossier for the CULT committee, he was expelled from his party following accusations of sexual harassment.

Now the Committee on Legal Affairs (JURI) has to decide on a final position, before submitting the opinion to the European Parliament vote at the July plenary session (see EUROPE 13186/31, 13146/22). The EU Council will discuss a general approach put forward by the Swedish Presidency at the June EU ‘Justice and Home Affairs’ Council (see EUROPE 13187/24).

Draft opinion: https://aeur.eu/f/72n ; amendments: https://aeur.eu/f/72o; and compromise amendments: https://aeur.eu/f/72q (Original version in French by Hélène Seynaeve)