Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 150
March 2012
Axel Springer AG v. Germany (dec.) - 44585/10
Decision 13.3.2012 [Section V]
Article 14
Discrimination
Selection, by drawing of lots, of journalists authorised to attend criminal trial: inadmissible
Facts – Two men were charged with the murder of a couple and their two daughters and with several counts of theft. In accordance with the Juvenile Courts Act, the public was excluded from the trial because the defendants had been juveniles at the time of the thefts. The president of the regional court’s juvenile criminal division set a limit of nine on the number of journalists authorised to attend the trial. A selection process was set up whereby journalists were divided into three categories, each being entitled to three places. The first category concerned regional print media, the second supra-regional print media or press agencies, and the third television and radio (both public and private broadcasters). Forty press representatives subsequently applied to attend the trial. After lots were drawn, the applicant company’s representative, writing for the national daily newspaper Bild, failed to gain a place. Of the journalists selected in the “supra-regional print media” category, two worked for weekly magazines and the third was a press-agency representative. The applicant company complained to the division president about the selection method used, objecting that no journalists from a supra-regional daily newspaper had been selected in the category to which it belonged. It asked for the places to be reallocated and proposed a “pool” system so that the media admitted to the trial would not enjoy a monopoly on information. The division president refused its request. The Federal Constitutional Court dismissed a constitutional complaint by the applicant company, holding that the company had not suffered a particularly serious disadvantage and that the complaint was not of fundamental importance in the particular circumstances of the case.
Law – Article 14 in conjunction with Article 10: Although no right per se for the press to have access to a particular source of information could