Information Note on the Court’s case-law 58
November 2003
Zollmann v. the United Kingdom (dec.) - 62902/00
Decision 27.11.2003 [Section III]
Article 6
Article 6-2
Presumption of innocence
Applicability of Article 6 § 2 to statements made in Parliament: inadmissible
Article 6-1
Access to court
Parliamentary immunity – impossibility of suing Minister for defamation: inadmissible
The two applicants are brothers who run an international diamond business. In 1998, the United Nations Security Council, with a view to stopping the civil war in Angola, imposed sanctions against UNITA, forbidding the export of diamonds on behalf of this organisation. In 2000, a UK Minister speaking in the House of Commons, named the applicants as persons having broken the UN sanctions by exporting diamonds to Antwerp for UNITA. The Minister's declaration was made public and reported by the press. A criminal investigation against the applicants was opened in Belgium, but no charges were brought against them. One of the applicants requested the Minister to retract his allegations publicly or to waive the parliamentary privilege attaching to his statements, which would permit him to take proceedings in the courts. The Minister did neither. The applicants claim that his statements harmed their reputation and business.
Inadmissible under Article 6 § 2: The statements made against the applicants were not related to any criminal proceedings which could render this Article applicable. As it was not apparent that a United Nations Security Council Resolution was sufficient in itself to create a prosecutable “international offence”, it could not be maintained that the applicants had been charged with a “criminal offence” for the purposes of Article 6 § 2. Moreover, there was no close link between the statements of the Minister and the criminal investigations against the applicants in Belgium, which in any event did not result in charges being brought against them: incompatible ratione materiae.
Inadmissible under Article 6 § 1: The absolute privilege attaching to statements made in Parliament pursued the legitimate aim of protecting free speech in Parliament (the Court's reasoning in the A. v. the United Kingdom judgment was recalled). The parliamentary immunity was proportionate and not altered by the facts of the case, in particular considering that the Minister's allegations had at least been arguably relevant in the context of the House of Commons debate, and that the damaging repercussions to the applicants' business seemed to be more a result of UN Sanctions Committee documents, where the applicants were also named, rather than the Minister's statement.
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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