“Year after year, SLAPPs are increasingly a worrying threat to democracy across Europe”, warned CASE, a coalition of non-governmental organisations fighting against Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs) in Europe, in its annual report published on Wednesday 23 August.
Power imbalance
In fact, it lists 820 SLAPPs in 2023, compared with 570 in 2022, with a “notable number” of lawsuits recorded in Malta, France, the United Kingdom, Croatia, Greece, Turkey and Georgia.
These procedures are generally initiated by “those in positions of power; namely, businesses and politicians” and mainly target journalists who write about corruption, the environment, business and government.
“Abusive legal actions are most commonly launched against individuals, which shows how critical it is for a support network to be available”, CASE pointed out, explaining that journalists are more often targeted personally than through the media outlet for which they work.
In the event of a SLAPP, the median damages claimed was €15,150, it added.
Criminal proceedings
CASE also found that “most lawsuits are based on national defamation laws or similar provisions on insult or honour”.
However, while defamation laws generally fall under criminal law, the future ‘anti-SLAPPs’ directive is expected to only relate to civil proceedings. Neither the Council of the EU nor the European Parliament have proposed extending the scope of this directive, which is currently being negotiated by the co-legislators (see EUROPE 13220/10, 13198/2), to fully criminal proceedings, because of a lack of a legal basis (see EUROPE 13210/22).
The second round of political interinstitutional negotiations (‘trilogue’) will be held on 9 October.
The report: https://aeur.eu/f/8c6 (Original version in French by Hélène Seynaeve)