Facts: The applicant was a newspaper, Timpul Info-Magazine, which published an article titled “Luxury in the Land of Poverty”. The article examined the relationship between the state authorities and a private company, specifically purchasing luxury cars by the Government with support of private company without making any information public. Accordingly to the article, the state authorities purchased 42 luxury cars for an amount exceeding EUR 1 million and the Government did not present any explanation of necessity to buy luxury cars. The article contained an accusation of corruption at the highest State level, which required sufficient investigation.

Private company, which exercised purchases on behalf of the state authorities, submitted an application against the newspapaer and complained that the newspaper published information without its consent and requested compensation for the damage. In accordance to the decision of the national court, the newspaper was seizured its property and its assets were frozen.

The newspaper submitted an application to the ECHR and complained of a violation of its right to freedom of expression under Article 10 of the Convention.

Court’s reasoning: The ECHR implicitly recognized the right of access to official documents and pointed out that the state should present particularly strong reasons for any measure affecting this role of the press and limitting access to information which the public has the right to receive.

The Court did not take into account the governments’ argument, that the newspaper has intended to attack private company’s reputation and affect fair competition rules. The Court decided that the article was clearly aimed at criticising the Government for a non-transparent and wasteful manner of spending public money, which is genuine public interest. The court interpreted that pravite companies participated in transactions in which considerable public funds are involved should be under a strict scrutiny from the society because of the high public interest in this issue. The Court pointed out the role of the press as social “watchdog”in a democratic society to impart ideas on matters of public interest and stated that the fine may have chilling effect on the newspaper to participate discussion in the future.

The Court stated that there has been a violation of Article 10 of the Convention.

Timpul Info-Magazine and Anghel v Moldova, Decision of the ECHR, 27 January, 2007 Prepared in the framework of the Open Society Human Rights Internship Grant 2013.

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