Information Note on the Court’s case-law 101

October 2007

Verein gegen Tierfabriken Schweiz (VgT) v. Switzerland (no. 2) - 32772/02

Judgment 4.10.2007 [Section V]

Article 10

Article 10-1

Freedom of expression

Refusal to revise a judgment prohibiting a television commercial from being broadcast which had previously given rise to a finding of a violation of Article 10 by the European Court of Human Rights : violation

[This case was referred to the Grand Chamber on 31 March 2008]

Facts : The applicant is an animal-protection association. Ruling on its first application (24699/94), the European Court of Human Rights, in a judgment of 28 June 2001, found that t here had been a violation of Article 10 because of the Swiss authorities’ refusal to allow its television commercial expressing opposition to battery livestock rearing methods to be broadcast. Based on the Court’s judgment, the applicant association applie d to the Federal Court to revise its judgment prohibiting the broadcasting of the commercial. In 2002 the Federal Court dismissed that application. The applicant association lodged this new application with the Court to challenge that decision. The Committ ee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, which is responsible for supervising execution of the Court’s judgments, had not been informed of these developments, and accordingly ended its examination of the applicant association’s initial application in 2003 , referring to the possibility of lodging a request for revision with the Federal Court.

Law : The refusal to set aside the decision banning the broadcasting of the commercial in issue gave rise to a fresh interference in the exercise by the applicant assoc iation of its rights under Article 10. The Federal Court had rejected its application for review on the ground that it had not provided a sufficient explanation of the nature of “the amendment of the judgment and the redress being sought”. That approach ap peared overly formalistic, seeing that it followed from the circumstances of the case as a whole that the association’s request concerned the broadcasting of the commercial in question, which the Federal Court itself had prohibited in 1997. Furthermore, th e Federal Court had held that the applicant association had not sufficiently shown that it still had an interest in broadcasting the commercial in its original version. In so doing, it had effectively taken the place of the association in deciding whether there was still any purpose in broadcasting the commercial. It had failed, however, to explain how the public debate on battery farming had changed or become less topical since 1994, when the commercial was initially meant to have been broadcast. That bein g so, the reasons given by the Swiss Federal Court, having regard to the case as a whole and to the interest of a democratic society in ensuring and maintaining freedom of expression in matters of indisputable public interest, were not relevant and suffici ent to justify the interference in issue.

Conclusion : violation (five votes to two).

© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.

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