After Thursday 7 May, the deadline for transposing the Anti-SLAPP Directive (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) into national law in the EU27, a letter signed by six press law organisations, including the European Federation of Journalists and the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, denounces the “alarming and incomplete” transposition of the Directive by EU Member States.
Also known as the ‘Daphne Law’, in honour of Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was murdered in 2017 while facing 48 abusive prosecutions, this legislation aims to protect the media from SLAPPs. The Directive, adopted in 2024, includes a mechanism for the early rejection of manifestly unfounded complaints and sanctions against abusive claimants.
However, the European Anti-SLAPP Monitor, created at the initiative of the NGO coalition CASE, reveals a major legal fragmentation in the Union: as of Friday 8 May, none of the 27 Member States had met the deadline. Of these, only 18 have officially launched their legislative process to incorporate the Directive into national law. France and Malta are the only two countries with at least “partial implementation”.
What is even more worrying is that protection for journalists is often limited to cross-border cases, excluding more than 90% of real cases, which are played out at national level.
Against this backdrop, the signatories urge the European Commission to take “swift infringement action where Member States fall short” to prevent such abusive practices from continuing to threaten “the media’s ability to cover public interest”.
The joint letter: https://aeur.eu/f/luf (Original version in French by Justine Manaud)