Tech & Rights

Journalists Can't Be Barred From Parliament, Strasbourg Court Rules

The court ruled earlier this month that the freedom of expression rights of several Macedonian journalists were violated when they were forced to leave a 2012 parliamentary debate on the state budget.

by Hungarian Civil Liberties Union
Many European countries are keen on punishing news outlets posing unpleasant questions to MPs by barring them from working inside parliament.

Journalists forcibly removed

The case stems from an incident at the Macedonian Parliament on December 24, 2012, when journalists were forcibly removed from the building while they were reporting on the parliamentary debate on the state budget for the coming year.

The journalists, backed by the Association of Journalists of Macedonia, initiated legal proceedings in national courts, arguing that their right to freedom of expression, protected by both the national constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), had been breached. The case eventually went the the country's Constitutional Court, which ruled that the journalists' rights had not been violated.

The case, Selmani and Others v. Macedonia, reached the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Strasbourg, where the applicants complained of two ECHR violations:

  • under Article 6, which guarantees a fair trial, because of the lack of an oral hearing before the Constitutional Court;
  • and under Article 10, which protects freedom of expresion, because of their forcible removal from the Parliament gallery on December 24, 2012.

On February 9, the ECtHR delivered its verdict, agreeing with the applicants that violations of Articles 6 and 10 had occurred. In its ruling, the court said:

"[T]he government failed to establish convincingly that the applicants’ removal from the gallery was necessary in a democratic society and met the requirement of 'pressing social need'. While the reasons provided by the Constitutional Court were relevant, they cannot be regarded, in the circumstances, as sufficient to justify the applicants’ removal from the gallery."

The judgment only concerns the case in question, i.e., it is not universally applicable.

Events in Hungary

The Strasbourg court declared that banning journalists violates the public interest because citizens are denied access to important information. This argument was adopted by the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union when it turned to the European Court of Human Rights representing six journalists who had been banned from entering the Hungarian Parliament. The Hungarian press people were not allowed to enter the building by the rule of the President of the Parliament, allegedly because they had been making video recordings in areas outside of the extremely narrow corridors where filming is allowed by the President of the House.

The Hungarian Civil Liberties Union maintains that in a democratic society it is unacceptable that the legislature should restrict film recordings without revealing the actual cause behind this move; any restrictions on the freedom of the press, in general as well as in particular cases, should be supported by clear reasoning by the political power.

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