On 9 June, the Department for the Execution of Judgments participated in the launch of the Greek version of the HELP course on freedom of expression. The launch was accompanied by an online seminar which was organised by the Council of Europe HELP Programme in cooperation with HELP’s national partner, the Greek National School of Judges.
According to the established case-law of the European Court, freedom of expression is one of the essential foundations of a democratic society, one of the primary conditions for its progress and for the development of each individual. The Court has emphasised that freedom of expression is subject to exceptions, but these must be interpreted narrowly, as the need to restrict it must be convincingly established. The adjective "necessary" in Article 10 § 2 implies a "pressing social need". This provision leaves little room for restrictions on freedom of expression in two areas: political speech and matters of public interest. Contracting States have a certain margin of appreciation in judging the existence of such a need, but this is coupled with European supervision of both the law and the decisions applying it, even when they emanate from an independent court.
As regards Greece, the European Court has rendered over the years a significant number of judgments finding violations of Article 10. Two relevant groups of cases are pending before the Committee of Ministers for more than ten years (Vasilakis group, Katrami group). The first group of cases concerns violations of the applicants’ freedom of expression due to civil courts’ decisions by which they were ordered to pay damages for defamation, slanderous defamation or insult, through articles published in the press or broadcastings of secretly filmed video-recordings. The second one concerns violations of the applicants’ freedom of expression due to the criminal convictions imposed on them for insult, defamation or malicious defamation.
Forty participants (Greek judges and prosecutors) registered to follow the HELP course and twenty (20) of them followed the online seminar. Participants included Ioannis Ktistakis, Judge at the European Court of Human Rights, and Αnastasia Papadopoulou, Supreme Court Judge and General Director of the National School of Judges.
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