Activity Details (ID# 4980)

Activity Synopsis

The general objective of the two training seminars was to present to the judges and prosecutors from Moldova the general principles developed by the European Court of Human Rights concerning Article 10 of the ECHR and its application as regards defamation, insult, criticism of public figures, privacy, incitement to hatred, access to information, protection of sources, state secrecy and whistle-blowing.

Besides this general objective, there was also a particular practical objective to examine two case studies related to defamation and State secret and prepared by the two CoE experts, namely Mr Bruno NEDELEC, magistrate in the Court of Monaco, and Mr Pascal DOURNEAU-JOSETTE, lawyer at the registry of the European Court of Human Rights.

The participants were very motivated and interested by the expert’s presentations. They took the opportunity to ask questions about European judicial systems and the mechanism of functioning of the ECHR. During the seminar the participants discussed domestic cases concerning freedom of expression and information and compared the decision of the national courts with European Court decisions in the similar cases.
 

Both seminars were very well organised. Various Council of Europe documents concerning freedom of expression, translated into Romanian, were distributed to the participants (Case law concerning Article 10 of the ECHR, a number of Recommendations concerning freedom of expression adopted by the Committee of Ministers).

The experts’ presentations were informative and provoked active participation on the part of judges and prosecutors in the discussion. They were especially interested by presentations and cases concerning defamation, access to information, privacy and criticism of public figures. They discussed similar cases in their country and compared the decisions with European Court decisions.

During the two seminars, it appeared that participants’ knowledge about the ECHR in general and especially Article 10 was quite limited. This was the reason for their relatively passive participation during the discussions. The Council of Europe experts were excellent and made very interesting presentations. During the role-playing exercises, the experts tried to involve the participants in the discussion. They asked very simple questions about the hypothetical cases presented in order to help them to better understand Article 10 and the practice of the European Court of Human Rights.

During the discussions, it was said that some of national laws are not really compatible with the European standards; it was stressed in this connection that legislative improvement and training of professionals should be undertaken before these standards could be applied in Moldova.

 

At the end of both seminars, an evaluation questionnaire was distributed to the participants. According to the replies, most participants were interested in Article 10 case law and in ECHR issues in general. They were of the opinion that Article 10 and the ECHR in general need to be concretely applied and that existing protection of human rights in general, and freedom of expression and information in particular, was insufficient. They suggested further follow-up activities, expressing their wish to continue this kind of trainings, in order to become more familiar with the ECHR and to be able to apply in their daily practice the principles developed in the case law related to Article 10. Another suggestion was to organise a visit of Moldovan magistrates to Strasbourg to attend a hearing of the European Court of Human Rights. 

Judges and prosecutors of high courts 

Bruno NEDELEC, magistrate in the Court of Monaco
Pascal DOURNEAU-JOSETTE, lawyer at the registry of the ECHR
 

Mr Eugen CIBOTARU, Media Division, Directorate General of Human Rights