SLAPPs in Europe - the Data
SLAPPs - strategic lawsuits against public participation - are lawsuits launched by powerful individuals or organisations against those whose speech they want to silence. Journalists investigating corruption or the affairs of the powerful are common victims of SLAPPs, but activists, NGOs, media organisations, academics, whistleblowers, protesters - almost anyone can find themselves on the wrong side of a legal threat designed to exhaust their financial and psychological reserves and deter them from speaking out.
SLAPPs can use employ different legal bases - defamation actions, privacy suits, public order charges - but what they have in common is that they are an abuse of the legal system enabled by a disparity of power between plaintiffs and defendants. They are a form of lawfare which uses the costs of defending a legal action - the financial costs, the psychological costs, the redirection of time and attention - as a means of harming targets. Cross-border SLAPPs, initiated overseas, are particularly challenging and expensive to defend against.
The Coalition against SLAPPs in Europe (CASE), which is campaigning for an EU Anti-SLAPP Directive, has been working since 2019 to map out the full scope and impact of SLAPPs in Europe. Given that an unknown number of legal threats are issued that do not ever reach court - and many on the receiving end of legal threats feel unable to talk about them - the CASE figures understate the scale of the problem. Nevertheless, CASE’s analysis of 570 SLAPP suits across the continent, published in March 2022, strongly supports the theory that SLAPPs are a problem on the rise.
What we know
The past five years has seen a huge increase in the number of SLAPPs filed. The CASE research shows a significant growth in recorded SLAPP cases since 2016, when 24 cases were recorded. In 2020, the CASE data shows 114 SLAPP cases with 111 in 2021.
The situation is particularly acute in some EU member states, which see large numbers of SLAPP cases filed - particularly Croatia, Italy and Poland. The countries with the largest numbers of SLAPPs filed relative to the size of the population are Malta, Croatia and Slovenia. Slovenia also sees a significant number of SLAPPs filed as private prosecutions.
The overwhelming majority of SLAPP cases recorded in the CASE data set are defamation claims, but plaintiffs are getting more creative with their SLAPPs. Cases built around GDPR and privacy claims are a notable growth area.
Cross border cases accounted for just over 10% of the total. Almost a quarter of these cross border cases were filed in the UK.
The most frequent targets of SLAPPs are - journalists, media organisations, activists, NGOs and academics. Over half of the recorded SLAPPs (55%) targeted individuals - who can be in a much weaker position than big organisations with access to legal advice.
SLAPPs are most often initiated by companies or business people (32%), politicians or people in public service (23%), followed by state-owned entities and members of the judiciary.