Communicated on 16 January 2020 Published on 3 February 2020

THIRD SECTION

Application no. 35550/18 Grégory ENGELS against Russia lodged on 23 July 2018

SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE

The application is a follow-up case of application no. 61919/16 which concerned the Russian authorities ’ decision to block temporarily access to the applicant ’ s website RosKomSvoboda . The instant case concerns the decision to block access to that website in State-owned schools in Moscow.

QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES

Was there a violation of Article 10 of the Convention on account of the decision to block access to the RosKomSvoboda website ( https://roskomsvoboda.org or https://rublacklist.net ) in State-operated schools in Moscow? In particular,

(a) Did the blocking decision have a foreseeable and precise legal basis? Did the website contain information prohibited under federal law no. 436 ‑ FZ on the protection of children from information capable of harming their well-being or development?

(b) Did the domestic courts give relevant and sufficient reasons for upholding the blocking decision? Did they identify the specific offending information on the applicant ’ s website?

(c) Was the blocking decision a proportionate measure? Was it necessary to block access to the entire website rather than to specific offending webpages? Was there an assessment of the impact of the blocking decision on webpages that did not contain any offending information?