Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 53
May 2003
Appleby and Others v. the United Kingdom - 44306/98
Judgment 6.5.2003 [Section IV]
Article 10
Article 10-1
Freedom of expression
Refusal of permission to solicit signatures for a petition in a privately owned shopping mall: no violation
Facts: The applicants are three individuals and an environmental group which they set up to campaign against a proposed development on a playing field in the vicinity of their town centre. The first applicant set up stands at the entrance to “The Galleries” shopping mall, built by a public development corporation as the new town centre and subsequently sold to a private company. The applicant was obliged to remove the stands after security guards prohibited her from continuing to collect signatures for a petition. She was given permission by the manager of one of the hypermarkets in the mall to set up stands and collect signatures in the store. However, the manager of the mall itself refused permission to set up a stall in the mall or in adjacent car parks, referring to the owner’s policy of strict neutrality on political and religious issues. The applicants continued to seek access to the public by setting up stalls on public footpaths and in the old town centre.
Law: Article 10 – The Government did not bear any direct responsibility for the restrictions on the applicants’ freedom of expression and the Court was not persuaded that any element of State responsibility could be derived from the fact that a public development corporation had transferred property to the owner or that this had been done with ministerial permission. The issue to be determined was therefore whether the Government had failed in any positive obligation to protect the applicants’ rights from interference by the private owner. The matter to which the applicants wished to draw attention was one of public interest. However, freedom of expression is not unlimited and it was necessary to have regard also to another Convention right, namely the owner’s right of property. In so far as the applicants referred to case-law from the United States and Canada, it could not be said that there was as yet any emerging consensus that could assist the Court in its examination under Article 10, which did not bestow any freedom of forum. The Court was not convinced that changes in the ways in which people move around and come into contact with each other required the automatic creation of rights of entry to private property, although it did not exclude that a positive obligation to regulate property rights could arise where a bar on access to property had the effect of preventing any effective exercise of freedom of expression or destroying the essence of the right. In the present case, however, the restriction on the applicants’ ability to communicate their views was limited to the entrance areas and passageways of the mall; it did not prevent them from obtaining permission from individual businesses within the mall, from distributing their leaflets on the public access paths, from campaigning in the old town centre or from employing alternative means such as calling door-to-door or seeking exposure through the media. Consequently, the applicants could not claim that they were effectively prevented from communicating their views to their fellow citizens. Balancing the rights at issue, the Court did not find that the Government had failed in any positive obligation to protect the applicants’ freedom of expression.
Conclusion: no violation (6 votes to 1)
Article 11 – Largely identical considerations arose under this provision.
Conclusion: no violation (6 votes to 1).
Article 13 – In so far as no remedy existed prior to the Human Rights Act taking effect in October 2000, Article 13 cannot be interpreted as requiring a remedy against the state of domestic law. Thereafter, it would have been possible for the applicants to raise their complaints before the domestic courts.
Conclusion: no violation (unanimously).
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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