European Court of Human Rights
11 June 2020
Facts
The applicants were members of a local collective supporting the Palestinian cause. They were prosecuted for calling on customers in a hypermarket not to purchase products from Israel, under a French law prohibiting incitement to discrimination. The applicants were convicted and ordered to pay damages.
Complaint
The applicants complained about their criminal conviction and relied on Article 10 of the Convention.
Court’s ruling
The Court found that the applicants’ conviction was an interference in their freedom of expression. Such interference had been prescribed by law and pursued the legitimate aim of protecting the rights of others, namely the right of market access of producers or suppliers of products from Israel. The question was whether the interference had been necessary in a democratic society.
Firstly, the Court noted that a call for boycott is a means of expressing a protest which is covered by Article 10. However, the Court noted that a call for boycott is special in that it combines the expression of a protesting opinion with incitement to differential treatment, so that it may sometimes amount to incitement to discrimination. According to the Court, incitement to discrimination is one of the limits which should never be overstepped in exercising freedom of expression, but the Court emphasized that merely inciting a difference in treatment is not necessarily the same as inciting discrimination.
The Court then found that in the present case the disputed actions and remarks had concerned a subject of public interest regarding the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territories and had been part of a contemporary debate in France. Moreover, the call for boycott was part of a political and militant expression, whose nature is to be controversial and often virulent. According to the Court the limit that should not be overstepped was that it should not turn into a call for violence, hatred or intolerance. In the present case, this limit had not been crossed. The Court concluded that the applicant’s conviction was not necessary and had violated Article 10.