Information Note on the Court’s case-law 236
January 2020
Studio Monitori and Others v. Georgia - 44920/09 and 8942/10
Judgment 30.1.2020 [Section V]
Article 10
Article 10-1
Freedom to impart information
Freedom to receive information
Courts’ denial of applicants’ unmotivated requests to access criminal files concerning unrelated third parties, not instrumental for exercise of freedom-of-expression rights: no violation
Facts – The first and second applicants are a non-governmental organisation and a journalist. They were denied access to a case file concerning a criminal case unrelated to them. The third applicant, a practising lawyer, unsuccessfully requested copies of detention orders in six criminal cases totally unrelated to him.
Law – Article 10: In order to determine whether Article 10 could be said to apply to a public authority’s refusal to disclose information, the situation had to be assessed in the light of the following criteria: (i) the purpose of the information request; (ii) the nature of the information sought; (iii) the particular role of the seeker of the information in “receiving and imparting” it to the public; and (iv) whether the information was ready and available.
Whilst the journalistic role of the first and second applicants had been undeniably compatible with the scope of the right to solicit access to State-held information, the purpose of their information request had not satisfied the relevant criterion under Article 10. They had failed to specify, in the relevant domestic proceedings, the purpose of their request for permission to consult the criminal case file. They had never explained why the documents had been necessary for the exercise of their freedom to receive and impart information to others. Noting that omission, the domestic authority had explicitly invited the applicants to address that gap by clarifying the purpose of their request. The authority had also expressed its readiness to reconsider its initial refusal upon receipt of the requisite information from the applicants. The latter, however, had not availed themselves of that opportunity and had instead decided to sue the authority for breaching their alleged right to have unrestricted access to State-held information of public interest. However, Article 10 did not confer on individuals an absolute right to access State-held information.
Even in the absence of the information sought, the first and second applicants had been able to proceed with their journalistic investigation and make its results accessible to the public. The access to the relevant criminal case material had not been instrumental for the effective exercise of their freedom-of-expression rights. Indeed, the second applicant had herself acknowledged before the domestic court that she, as a journalist, had not needed the information for the purposes of her journalistic activities and that it had been merely a matter of principle for her to obtain judicial acknowledgement of what she had considered to be her unfettered right to have access to State-held public information. As regards the first and second applicants’ argument regarding the correlation between the disclosure of the information of interest to them and the quality of their ultimate journalistic product, they had never voiced any similar argument before the domestic courts.
The third applicant had also not explained to the relevant court registry the purpose of his request to obtain a full copy of the relevant court decisions. In those circumstances, the information sought had not been instrumental for the exercise of his freedom-of-expression rights. Most importantly, it had been unclear how the third applicant’s role in society could have satisfied the relevant criterion under Article 10: he was neither a journalist nor a representative of a “public watchdog”. He had not clarified in the proceedings before the Court how he could have enhanced, by receiving a copy of detention orders in six criminal cases totally unrelated to him, the public’s access to news or facilitated the dissemination of information in the interest of public governance. Neither had the information solicited from the domestic judicial authority by the third applicant met the relevant public-interest test under Article 10. While acknowledging the significance of the principle that court decisions were to be pronounced publicly and should, in some form, be made accessible to the public in the interest of the good administration of justice and transparency, the requirement that the information sought meet a public-interest test in order to prompt a need for disclosure under Article 10 was different, as it referred to the specific subject matter of the document, in this case the judicial orders. The applicant had limited his arguments to stating that the solicited judicial decisions concerned high-profile criminal cases instituted against former high-ranking State officials for corruption offences. However, the fact that the accused in those cases had been well-known public figures had not in itself been sufficient to justify, under Article 10, disclosure of a full copy of the relevant judicial orders concerning the ongoing criminal proceedings – including the parts that had not constituted public information according to domestic law – to a third party acting in a purely private capacity. Indeed, the public interest was hardly the same as an audience’s curiosity.
Conclusion: no violation (unanimously).
(See also Österreichische Vereinigung zur Erhaltung, Stärkung und Schaffung v. Austria, 39534/07, 28 November 2013, Information Note 168; Roşiianu v. Romania, 27329/06, 24 June 2014, Information Note 175; Magyar Helsinki Bizottság v. Hungary [GC], 18030/11, 8 November 2016, Information Note 201; and Sioutis v. Greece (dec.), 16393/14, 29 August 2017, Information Note 210)
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This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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