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{JURI}Committee on Legal Affairs
{23/06/2010}23.6.2010
WORKING DOCUMENT
on the amendment of Regulation (EC) No 864/2007 on the law applicable to non-contractual obligations (Rome II)
{JURI}Committee on Legal Affairs
Rapporteur: Diana Wallis
Background
At present there are 27 substantive Member State laws on non-contractual obligations arising out of violations of privacy and rights relating to the personality. Even the briefest examination of these different laws uncovers a great diversity; of constitutional foundations; of the associated balance between conflicting fundamental rights; of juridical categorisation; of legal concepts; and of maturity. This diversity is compounded by the absence of harmonised conflict-of-law rules, with each Member State currently applying its own private international law to disputes involving these rights. In this environment it becomes very difficult for interested rights-holders to predict the outcomes of their actions, while the cost of international litigation is greatly increased.
The challenges facing any legislative effort geared towards harmonisation have been lent a further layer of complexity by the advent of the Internet. At a recent EPP Group hearing, Vice-President Viviane Reding noted how, traditionally, the emergence of new means of communication would upset the balance of the established media in the short term, before something very similar to the status quo ante would soon re-emerge. This pattern has been broken by the Internet. Its limitless scope has had a disruptive effect on all long-standing structures, not least the law, and presents legislators with unique challenges. The foremost of these, in the realm of private international law is the Internet's potential to open the way for forum-shopping. It is only very recently that evidence has emerged which will now help frame an informed and reasonable debate on this issue.
The exclusion of non-contractual obligations arising out of the violation of privacy and personality rights from Regulation No 864/2007 (Rome II)
The history of failed attempts to include violations of privacy and personality rights within the scope of the Rome II Regulation shows how difficult it is to find a consensus in this area. It warrants detailed consideration as it provides a good summary of the obstacles which must be overcome if the present review is to be successful.
As a preliminary matter, two features of the Rome II regulation are of particular interest. The first is the establishment of the "place in which the tort/wrong took place" as the general connecting factor for law applicable to non-contractual obligations. This is in line with traditional conflict-of-law rules but nevertheless constitutes a recent rejection by the Commission of the wrongdoer's establishment or habitual residence as appropriate. The second notable feature of the Rome II Regulation is its continuance of a recent trend towards specialised conflict-of-laws rules for specific areas.
The Commission's preliminary draft proposal had the habitual residence of the person harmed as the connecting factor for law applicable. This had the advantage of positing one applicable law, thus preventing the situation made possible by the Brussels I jurisdiction regime whereby a Member State court can be obliged to apply, on a distributive basis, the laws of each country in which a claimant claims to have had his or her reputation damaged by a publication. Media interests are generally hostile to rules which might force publishers to take cognisance of laws other than those of their own establishment. As a result of this it was inevitable that stiff opposition would emerge. The main criticisms levelled at proposal were that the habitual residence of a celebrity can be difficult to determine and that it created a situation in which a publisher could be sanctioned by the Courts of their own establishment for behaviour that would have been perfectly compatible with that forum's law.
The Commission's legislative proposal responded to these criticisms by applying the regulation's general rule ("the place in which the damage took place") to privacy and personality rights, subject to the exception that if the law specified was contrary to the forum's fundamental rights principles, it could apply its own law. According to the definition of the place of damage for violations of privacy and personality rights in Shevill, the publication must have been distributed commercially. As a result of this it is fair to say that the Commission's second connecting factor fulfilled the legitimate expectations of both the publisher and the person harmed.
The European Parliament, following its first reading, presented a very different amended provision. This incorporated a new connecting factor, namely "the law of the country in which the most significant element or elements of the loss or damage occur or are likely to occur". While this appears similar to the Commission's proposal, the amended section goes on to define it in terms tending towards the application of the law of the publisher's establishment. The Commission saw this amendment as too sympathetic towards the media, and as going against the approaches adopted by most Member States. The irreconcilable positions adopted by the Commission, Council and Parliament led to the exclusion of privacy and personality rights from the scope of Rome II, and the inclusion in its Article 30 of a review clause promising a comprehensive study of this field. The resulting document (hereinafter the "Mainstrat Study") provides a solid foundation from which realistic legislative initiatives can be built.
The Option of Maintaining the Status Quo
The antagonistic relationship between privacy and personality rights and those relating to freedom of expression can make for provocative debating material. Any State's decisions on how to calibrate the balance between these rights will reflect its particular views on how a democracy should operate; such views are often so strongly held that they can obstruct rational debate. As the controversy leading to the publication of New York's Libel Terrorism Act shows, international defamation cases provide the perfect arena for culture clashes. The depth of feeling associated with such fundamental rights also relates to the distinctly partisan stances adopted by stakeholders. The failure to reach a consensus during the Rome II procedure shows how interested parties tend to either recoil conservatively from the uncertainty involved in legal innovations or lobby aggressively for change. Against this backdrop the option of maintaining the status quo must remain a possibility.
Another factor weighing against legislative intervention is the simple fact that "cross-border cases within the EU don't in fact happen a great deal at the moment". The high-profile cases which do emerge tend, for obvious reasons, to get a lot of media attention and hence spark reactionary policy debates. The widespread suspicion among practitioners, also evident in the academic and jurisprudential literature, that the occurrence of these disputes is in fact quite rare, has been borne out by the Mainstrat Study and by the UK Ministry for Justice's Libel Working Group.
The weight attributed this evidence must be corrected slightly to allow for the disproportionate "cooling effect" rare but exorbitant awards against the media may have. The threat of drastic financial penalties, sometimes attributable to jurisdictional culture but often dependent on high systemic costs, which do occasionally fall on journalists who find themselves on the wrong side of, for instance, English or French law, is one of the main impetuses driving this review. In a recent public lecture Lord Steyn notes how "very often British newspapers, when sued in libel, give up and settle when one would not expect them to do so". If a paucity of cases is one real-world fact, then the grave difficulties currently confronting the international print media is certainly another. The essential role played by a healthy pluralistic media in a functioning democracy requires that these current problems are not exacerbated by the costs and uncertainties of unsuitable laws.
Unification of Substantive Law: Issues of Constitutional and Political Feasibility
Since this working document is being prepared with a view to the possible instigation of an Article 225 procedure, it is appropriate to consider the whole complement of legislative options. The first thing to establish when considering the unification of Member State laws is whether an appropriate legal basis can be found in the Treaties. There follow some possible options:
Article 81(2)(e) TFEU
This article allows the adoption of measures facilitating judicial cooperation in civil matters, while Section 2(e) has the specific goal of ensuring effective access to justice. The article is generally used to ground private international law rules but the reference to "approximation of laws could leave the way open for measures of partial harmonisation of minimum standards.
Article 114 TFEU
This would be an option if a coherent argument could be made that substantive law unification was necessary for the functioning of the common market. During the Rome II procedure and indeed in their correspondence with the authors of the Mainstrat study, Media organisations have protested against Union intervention on the basis that it is not necessary for the proper functioning of the common market and hence that no legal basis for such intervention exists.
Article 352 TFEU
The "flexibility clause" fits the immediate purpose on a theoretical level. Article 3(2) establishes the creation of a European area of freedom, justice and security as a core Union objective. If an argument could be sustained that a unified code of non-contractual obligations, restricted to or including those arising out of violations of privacy and personality rights, was necessary for the achievement of the AFJS, then Article 352 could provide a legal basis. Assuming the existence of Union power in this dossier, its exercise must be consistent with the principles of subsidiary and proportionality. Article 352(2)-(4) provides for strict subsidiarity controls and procedural safeguards, requiring the consent of the European Parliament and the notification of national parliaments.
Legislative Attitude
Given the previous failure to find an acceptable conflict of laws rule during the drafting of Rome II, it is questionable whether the unification of substantive law is possible at the present time. A certain degree of convergence has been brought about through the fact that all the Member States have acceded to the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects both privacy rights (Article 8) and freedom of expression (Article 10), but it must be remembered that the Strasbourg Court often leaves States Parties a significant "margin of appreciation" in how they implement their laws. Its jurisprudence sanctions criminal defamation actions against journalists and the enforced publication of retractions and replies. Some European legal systems recognise these things while others do not. The examples are simply given to illustrate the fact that common human rights law obligations do not make up for wide divergences across Europe in conceptions of what privacy and freedom of expression actually involve and how best to regulate them in the interests of society.
Assuming that it was legally possible to lay down a single law on non-contractual obligations, is this something the Union should do? To put the question another way... what should be the overall purpose of the European legislator in this field: another step towards the realisation of a European civil law or the more modest aim of enhancing legal certainty and predictability among the Member State laws as they have developed? Since the meeting of the European Council at Tampere in 1999, the cultivation of mutual judicial trust and confidence has been the cornerstone of the drive to create a European area of freedom, security and justice. An argument can be made that this trust and confidence can never really develop while European lawyers have different conceptions of such elementary things as core fundamental rights. With this in mind, initiatives aimed at speeding the development of a "European Judicial Culture" are being actively pursued.
Legal implements such as opt-ins and enhanced cooperation allow Member States to tailor their level of participation in Union initiatives to their present social and political conditions, but they also have the capacity to create mistrust and frustration between Member States which are moving at "different speeds". It is understandable that those who want to press ahead with the process of integration don't want to see the Union "blocked by one or two bad bedfellows". It is also understandable, in the sphere of civil law integration, that the UK and Ireland's opt-ins might offend the democratic impulses of the Union's civil jurisdictions, with the common law posing repeated doctrinal and political challenges.
Diversity, however, brings strength as well as inconvenience. Europe's legal systems may not all come from the same source but they are all enriched through their interactions with one other. Foreign legal concepts and remedies can offer fresh perspectives on how a legal system can operate and how to resolve emerging issues facing society. Quite apart from the exchange of ideas, it is increasingly clear that legal systems can themselves add economic value and attract business through the remedies they offer and the efficiency with which they operate.
This is not to say that law-shopping is to be encouraged or tolerated in the realm of fundamental rights, but simply to suggest that, while the common European legal culture develops, the Community legislator should adopt an attitude towards civil law integration which seeks as far as possible to accommodate all the Member States.
Forum Shopping
There has been much ink spilt over the "phenomenon" of forum shopping, particularly its occurrence in the context of defamation law, where it is known is "libel tourism". Media interests have an obvious and understandable interest in the dissuasion of the practice and so it can be very difficult to judge whether the amount of publicity it generates is proportionate to the real effect it has on freedom of expression.
Both the results of the Mainstrat study and the evidence compiled by the UK's Working Group on Libel law suggest that "libel tourism" is not all that common. The Working Group's report is particularly significant because London is sometimes characterised as the "libel capital of the world", a reputation which has played a large role in debates over proposed Union-level conflict rules and, hence, provoked the UK into reviewing its laws. Its findings must be treated with a degree of caution because they only represent one year's cases and are at best a snapshot.
In total there were 219 defamation cases issued in the High Court in 2009. Of those, 32 were identified as having a "foreign connection", i.e. the address of one of the parties was outside the jurisdiction. A comprehensive list is contained in Annex B of the report and with reference to the 32 cases in question it should be noted that "Claimant lawyers highlighted that some of the cases which had been identified had been struck out and a few were not real libel tourism cases". 21 cases involved defendants and claimants located inside the EU; in only two of these were neither of the parties located in England. 13 involved defendants located inside and claimants located outside of the EU; only one of the defendants was located outside England. 5 involved defendants located outside and claimants located inside the EU; two of these claimants were from outside of England while three were based there. This is far from conclusive evidence of the existence of libel tourism as a widespread problem, even allowing for the inhibiting effect that single decisions and the mere threat of being brought to London may have. At the very least it suggests that while "forum-shopping" should play a role in the current debate, it should not be the only or indeed the determinative element.
At the end of its section on forum-shopping the Libel Working Group proposed a number of reforms, most of which are procedural, which should make the UK a less claimant-friendly jurisdiction:
giving the defendant the option to attend the initial hearing of the application to serve a claim outside of the jurisdiction;
taking steps to improve the evidence available at the application stage by setting out more detailed rules/procedure;
elevating the consideration of the application to judge level;
amending the grounds on which the court can grant permission to serve a claim out of the jurisdiction so that tighter rules apply for defamation claims;
and making applicants provide evidence about the nature and extent of the publication in question and why it makes sense to try the action there.
Lord Lester's libel reform bill would further discourage libel tourism by cost-cutting measures such as the abolition of jury-trials while it would also change the substantive law by getting rid of the much maligned multiple publications rule.
Harmonised Conflict-of-Law Rules
The following analysis is based on the maintenance of the current regime for determining jurisdiction in these cases: a combination of Articles 2 and 5(3) of Regulation No 44/2001(Brussels I) and the ECJ's decision in Shevill. These rules will be outlined briefly for the sake of clarity.
Article 2 specifies "the defendant's domicile" as the regulation's general connecting factor while Article 5(3) says that in cases of non-contractual obligations the claimant can sue in "the place in which the harm took place". To adjust Article 5(3) to the reality of the non-contractual obligations related to privacy and personality rights, Shevill gives claimants the option of suing in the defendant's establishment for the value of the entire claim or in each jurisdiction where they claim to have suffered damage to their reputation for the value of the damage done in that jurisdiction.
The broad range of opinions attracted by the Shevill rules shows how difficult it is to build a consensus in this area. While their real-world operation can arguably facilitate forum-shopping, they are sound on a theoretical level: it makes sense to allow a claimant to sue in a jurisdiction where he or she claims to have had his or her reputation damaged. The rules can even be commended for incentivising the plaintiff to make a consolidated claim in the defendant's establishment. It is logical, with regard to the other option, to claim that if the damage is only slight in a jurisdiction in which there was relatively minimal publication, the damages granted in that action should also be slight. To this it can be replied that a forum is often chosen just because of its unusual substantive law and the particular characteristics of its legal system.
Irrespective of the real disparities between the Member State legal systems, there is a process of "Europeanisation" going on at the level of fundamental rights, constitutional interpretation and systemic convergence. Has this process advanced far enough to facilitate the operation of theoretically sound conflict rules? Is it satisfactory to lay down such rules while this is still ongoing? These are questions better weighed while asking whether it is appropriate to legislate at all.
Having previously come to the tentative conclusion that the unification of Member State laws on non-contractual obligations arising out of violations of privacy and personality rights is not a feasible option at the present stage of European legal integration, we are left to investigate other legislative possibilities. The most obvious of these is to try to fill the gap left by the Rome II Regulation and establish harmonised conflict-of-laws rules. The terms of reference given by the Commission to the authors of the Mainstrat study would suggest that this is the avenue they are investigating.
The basis upon which European Conflict of Laws rules are traditionally formulated is the "proximity principle'. The rule should designate the most appropriate law for the given dispute with reference to its factual, geographical and legal characteristics. With regard to non-contractual obligations, the traditional connecting factor has been "the place in which the tort took place". This straight-forward application of this rule to non-contractual obligations arising out of violations of privacy and personality rights is problematic for two reasons. Firstly, the place of the event giving rise to the damage and the place where that damage materialises are not always the same (the distance publication problem) and, secondly, defamatory information can be published in a number of different jurisdictions at the same time (the multiple publications problem). An appropriate conflict-of-law rule must be designed with these problems in mind. Among the things which need to be determined include:
the connecting factor;
the inclusion or exclusion of an exception allowing the forum to apply its fundamental laws or public policies;
the inclusion or exclusion of an exception in favour of the law of the parties' common habitual residence or domicile;
The inclusion or exclusion or a general "closest ties" exception;
the interaction of the choice of law rule with the harmonised Union rules on jurisdiction;
whether of not it is satisfactory that a Member State Court should have to apply several laws in the same case;
and whether or not a separate rule is necessary for Internet publications
The main challenge is to find a universally acceptable connecting factor. One solution to the distance publication problem is to use the place in which the damage materialises, or some criterion such as the claimant's habitual residence or domicile, which tends towards the application of this law. This has the attraction of adding a high degree of predictability for both claimant and defendant, while it also avoids the distributive application of several laws in one case, a process for which insufficient infrastructure exists at the present time.
Whatever about its attractions, media organisations are extremely hostile towards this approach. Their claim that celebrities' habitual residences are difficult to determine does not have sufficient weight to of itself oblige a different course of action. Even if this was a significant problem it could be solved by including an exception to the general rule which allowed the preference of the jurisdiction with "closest ties" to the case. The vagueness and hence the uncertainty involved in a bare "closest ties" exception could be overcome by including criteria upon which the test is to be based.
The media's second objection to "the place in which the damage materialises" concerns the possibility of a journalist losing a case under a foreign defamation law when the material published conforms with the law of their place of establishment. Given the constitutional and substantive law diversity which exists across Europe, it is probably inevitable that a public policy exception to the general rule will have to be included in the final legislation. This would prevent the forum having to apply a law contrary to its own fundamental rights principles, but it would leave the theoretical possibility, in the case of a publisher sued in a foreign forum applying a third country's law, that the law applicable and that of the forum would both contradict the law of the publisher's establishment. It is suggested, therefore, that if the final legislation were to pursue this approach, it should include an exception to the effect that a publisher should not be held liable under a law that is contrary to the fundamental rights principles of its place of establishment. This does not mean that the publisher should escape liability simply because the substantive law applicable is less favourable, by some degree which does not contravene the public order of their establishment, than the substantive law of that place in those precise circumstances. Differences exist but they are not of such breadth that this scenario is likely to present significant problems in practice. It is also submitted that the number of cases in which it would materialise would be negligible. A further objection to such a rule is that it would encourage operators to establish themselves in jurisdictions with the weakest privacy and personality rights protection.
As an alternative to "the place in which the damage materialises", media organisations tend to advocate the use of 'the law of the publisher's establishment' as a connecting factor. They claim it is the only approach which gives enough protection to freedom of expression by reducing the number of laws a publisher has to factor into their decisions, thus reducing costs. As against this it is undeniably weighted in favour of the media. The publisher is the only person who is in control of the event which generates the cause of action. It hardly seems fair, in those circumstances, to allow the claimant to respond to an unexpected assertion from a foreign source under a foreign law. The place in which the tort is committed is the standard conflict-of-law criterion for non-contractual obligations because it addresses the hypothetical imbalance between the parties to a dispute. The claimant is the person who has suffered prejudice and so he or she should at least have the advantage of a law that is predictable to him or her. Now, discussing theoretical imbalances in the context of non-contractual obligations arising out of violations of privacy and personality rights is very difficult. The paradigm situation used to describe instances of libel tourism involves a rich individual who seeks to bring a journalist before the courts of a country with high transaction costs and strong privacy and personality laws. Defamation laws do not just protect the rich however and large international media corporations do exist. It is not impossible to imagine a situation where the balance of power between the parties to such a case could be skewed in favour of the publisher. This should lead us to investigate whether a "neutral" rule can be formulated.
In coming up with a conflict rule it is sensible to examine the conflict rules currently applied by the Member States. Those without specific rules for the subject matter at hand tend to apply the law of the place in which the tort was committed in some shape or form. More interesting perhaps are the laws of the handful of jurisdictions which have recently reformed their private international law, including specifically tailored rules for this area. These generally establish a series of connecting factors from which the claimant can choose. The obvious favour this grants the claimant is then balanced in some way. Romania's rule provides a representative example:
"(1) The claims for redress based on a prejudice caused to the personality by the mass media, especially by the press, radio, TV or by other public means of information shall be governed, at the choice of the injured person, by:
a) the law of the state of his domicile or residence;
b) the law of the state where the damaging outcome emerged;
c) the law of the state where the author of the damage has his domicile or residence or registered office.
(2) In cases provided under letters a) and b) it shall be required that the author of the damage should have reasonably expected that the effects of the prejudice cause to the personality be produced in one of the two states".
While it is unlikely that media interests will accept any element of claimant choice in the final rule, these modern conflict rules can inform the current debate in a number of ways. Their most valuable feature is the way in which they show how the balance between the competing fundamental rights can be dynamically balanced with the right provisions. While some lawyers and interested parties will want, above all else, the legal certainty inherent in a single prescriptive rule, there is a good argument for leaving a degree of flexibility. Given the amount of considerations in play, it is impossible to think of a simple rule which would not produce at least some odd or arbitrary consequences in certain circumstances. By providing a mechanism for informed choice, either by the judge or the parties themselves, from all of the available options, the conflict-of-law rule is far more likely to designate the most suitable law in practice. This is, after all, what it is supposed to do in the first place.
If such an approach were to be adopted it would be important to ensure that the check offered by any "foreseeability" clause was effective in practice. To do this it would be important to specify factors, such as the medium of publication and the language in question, to be used in determining whether the damage was foreseeable. There have also been suggestions that, in addition to these, there should be an objective threshold criterion based on a percentage of total publications taking place in the chosen jurisdiction. Against this it can be argued that the levels of such criteria are arbitrary and that with violations of privacy and personality rights it is often the quality and not the quantity that counts.
In its final conclusions the Mainstrat Study suggests that, even allowing for the normative guidance afforded by the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights, the fundamental laws of the Member States are too diverse to allow a conflict rule to solve this problem on its own. With this in mind, they suggest the use of a directive to standardise the level of protection afforded by privacy and personality rights across the Union. Were such a directive properly implemented, there would be no further reason to re-balance the relationship between the parties at the level of the conflict rule and so the publisher's establishment could be used as a connecting factor. One of the main focuses of the Committee's discussion should be on the possibility of establishing, in conjunction with appropriately formulated private international law rules, national bodies charged with monitoring the balance between freedom of expression and privacy and personality rights in their respective Member States. These bodies could enforce the common minimum standards necessary to allow jurisdiction and conflict of laws rules to function while tailoring their responses to the individual constitutional traditions of their home countries.
Is it necessary to draft specific rules for Internet publications?
The immediate, if somewhat unsatisfactory, answer would seem to be: "Only if it adds value". It is worth then, by way of conclusion, examining a number of existing private international law rules which address the internet with a view to finding useful ideas. The alleged incompatibility of the Shevill rules with the Internet age is one of the media organisations' main arguments in favour of their overhaul, and so the following analysis will deal with the Internet publications and the allocation of jurisdiction.
With regard to the Internet, it is necessary for a claimant suing under Shevill to show not just that the publication was accessible in the jurisdiction in question but that it was accessed and that damage to his or her reputation resulted. These requirements are not so minimal as to become empty of all content as Courts have sometimes tried to claim jurisdiction on the basis that a website could have been and probably was accessed from within their jurisdiction. This method evidently pursues a claimant-centred approach. In the US, by way of comparison, jurisdiction is allocated on the basis of the place of origin principle. In cases with elements in more than one State, multiple actions are avoided through the single publication rule. This involves a court determining, with reference to the facts of the case, where the "global cause" of the action arose from. This place has jurisdiction and multiple suits are not allowed. The context in which this rule operates must be remembered however: in the US there is a common constitutional foundation giving rise to a far higher degree of substantive law uniformity between States. The different reality in which European conflict rules operate means that the single publication rule is likely to remain a US rule for US circumstances. This in turn re-emphasises the fact that the acceptable use of the publisher's establishment as a connecting factor is, in a European context, largely dependent on some level of standardisation of the minimal protection afforded to each of the opposing fundamental rights in play.
Another example of a country of origin approach is provided by the European Data Protection Directive, which harmonises certain Member State privacy laws. This legislation demonstrates some of the problems with using physical location to allocate jurisdiction for wrongs committed through the internet. Article 28(6) states that each national data protecting authority has jurisdiction over data processing occurring in its own territory, and (that) there is no authority for a DPA to exercise jurisdiction except on its own territory. The Directive's Article 2 has an extremely wide definition of data processing, the interpretation of which is crucial for the successful implementation of the directive. The ECJ's decision in Factortame lays down the principle that for an undertaking to be established within a Member State for the purposes of Union law, it must actually pursue an economic activity through a fixed established for an indefinite period. Certain Member State laws seem to be in contravention of this requirement; for the purposes of Swedish and Finnish privacy law, the pursuit of any economic activity related to those jurisdictions can lead to a company being established there. This means that foreign companies whose websites generate revenue through Swedish or Finnish hits have been held amenable by their DPA's. Other relevant issues are thrown up by the Directive's Article 4(1)(c). These include the practical difficulty of determining the location of Internet servers and the issue of whether phone lines, and more significantly, software programs constitute "equipment" for these purposes.
It has been suggested that an appropriate way to allocate jurisdiction in these cases would be to grant jurisdiction to the place at which the publication was primarily directed. This clearly favours the publisher and sees the role of tort law in balancing fundamental rights take precedence over its role in remedying damage. The decision in the English case of Lewis v King states the arguments against this approach in very clear terms. The central problem is that it can leave the claimant without a realistic remedy for an unforeseen attack on his or her reputation.
One final topic of interest concerns the uses to which public policy can be put through "cyber-law". In LICRA v Yahoo the French Courts claimed jurisdiction over an American company domiciled in America because of its providing a service prohibited under French fundamental law (the exhibition for online auction of Nazi memorabilia) on a website which could be accessed in France. The "visualisation in France" of the objects in question meant a wrong had been committed on French territory while the presence of French banners on the website went against any claim that its services were not directed to French customers. The US Courts held that as the display of such objects is protected by the First Amendment to the American Constitution, the enforcement of the French decision would be unconstitutional. While the grounds upon which the French Courts claimed exorbitant jurisdiction could be seen as somewhat flimsy, in one way they were only trying to enforce French public policy on French soil. This is not how the District Court of California saw things, the decision stating that "by imposing restrictions on the US based Yahoo.com, the French Court tried to regulate the activities of a US corporation within the US". The borderless nature of the Internet leads us to question whether any legislation enacted following the current review should contain grounds for claiming extraordinary jurisdiction over operators based in third countries and, hence, whether such decisions are likely to be enforced.
'A Free Press is not for Free' (12.5.10 15).
Reidenberg notes how the Internet creates ambiguity for sovereign territory because network boundaries intersect and transcend national borders, while law and regulation have been organised on the assumption that activities are on the whole geographically delimited. " HYPERLINK "http://international.westlaw.com/find/default.wl?vc=0&ordoc=0352898151&rp=%2ffind%2fdefault.wl&DB=1268&SerialNum=0304686737&FindType=Y&ReferencePositionType=S&ReferencePosition=1974&AP=&spa=inteupar-000&rs=WLIN10.05&ifm=NotSet&fn=_top&sv=Split&mt=TabTemplate1&utid=7&vr=2.0&pbc=22BDD96F" \t "_top" Technology and Defamation Jurisdiction" (2005) 153 U.Pa.L.Rev 1951-1974, at p 1951.
Comparative study on the situation in the 27 Member States as regards the law applicable to non-contractual obligations arising out of violations of privacy and rights relating to the personality, JLS/2007/C4/028, Final Report; Report of the UK Ministry for Justice Libel Working Group (23.3.10).
Articles 2 and 5(3) of Regulation No 44/2001 as interpreted by the ECJ in Case C-68/93 Shevill [1995] ECR I-415.
COM (2003) 427 final.
Article 5 "Violations of privacy and rights relating to the personality".
1.As regards the law applicable to a non-contractual obligation arising out of a violation of privacy or rights relating to the personality, the law of the country in which the most significant element or elements of the loss or damage occur or are likely to occur shall be applicable.
Where the violation is caused by the publication of printed matter or by a broadcast, the country in which the most significant element or elements of the damage occur or are likely to occur shall be deemed to be the country to which the publication or broadcasting service is principally directed or, if this is not apparent, the country in which editorial control is exercised, and that country's law shall be applicable. The country to which the publication or broadcast is directed shall be determined in particular by the language of the publication or broadcast or by sales or audience size in a given country as a proportion of total sales or audience size or by a combination of those factors.
This provision shall apply mutatis mutandis to publications via the Internet and other electronic networks.
See No. 3 above.
See the Fifth Dame Anne Ebsworth Memorial Public Lecture given by the Rt Hon. The Lord Hoffmann on 6 February 2010.
LexisNexis UK Legal News Analysis: "Rome II proposals fuel debate of cross-border defamation laws" (15/8/06) available at http:// www.lexisnexis.com/uk/legal
To the question "How many civil court cases of violations of privacy or rights relating to personality, in a cross-border context, involving the mass media, have you been involved in during the last five years?", 76% of respondents stated "none". Of, those who experienced a case of this type, the majority experienced only 1 to 4 cases. The data indicates that this type of dispute is in fact not very numerous. See No. 8 supra at 122.
Report of the Libel Working Group (23.3.2010), Annex B: cases with a foreign connection issued in the High Court in 2009.
Defamation and Privacy: Momentum for Substantive and Procedural Change? The 3rd Annual Boydell Lecture delivered on 26.5.10, Available at http://inforrm.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/lord-steyn-boydell-lecture.pdf.
Article 81.
1. The Union shall develop judicial cooperation in civil matters having cross-border implications, based on the principle of mutual recognition of judgments and of decisions in extrajudicial cases. Such cooperation may include the adoption of measures for the approximation of the laws and regulations of the Member States.
2. For the purposes of paragraph 1, the European Parliament and the Council, acting in accordance with the ordinary legislative procedure, shall adopt measures, particularly when necessaryfor the proper functioning of the internal market, aimed at ensuring: ... (e) effective access to justice.
Article 114.
1. Save where otherwise provided in the Treaties, the following provisions shall apply for the achievement of the objectives set out in Article 26. The European Parliament and the Council shall, acting in accordance with the ordinary legislative procedure and after consulting the Economic and Social Committee, adopt the measures for the approximation of the provisions laid down by law, regulation or administrative action in Member States which have as their object the establishment and functioning of the internal market.
Case C-45/86 Generalised Tariff Preferences [1987] ECR 1493. The Court of Justice ruled that the mere finding of disparities between national rules and the abstract risk of obstacles to the exercise of fundamental freedoms or of distortions of competition liable to result therefrom, is not sufficient to justify the use of Article 95 (now 114) as a legal basis. The media organisations argument with regard to Article 81 runs to the effect that as it is a provision aimed at common market integration, of which Article 114 is the most important, the reasoning of the Court in Generalised Tariff Preferences applies mutatis mutandis.
Article 352(1).
If action by the Union should prove necessary, within the framework of the policies defined in the Treaties, to attain one of the objectives set out in the Treaties, and the Treaties have not provided the necessary powers, the Council, acting unanimously on a proposal from the Commission and after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament, shall adopt the appropriate measures. Where the measures in question are adopted by the Council in accordance with a special legislative procedure, it shall also act unanimously on a proposal from the Commission and after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament.
Further Europeanisation is likely to come as the Court of Justice develops its own jurisprudence on the Charter of Fundamental Rights.
Barfod v Denmark, Eur.Ct.H.R. Ser.A.149 (1989).
Perna v Italy, "Perna II", 2003-V Eur. Ct. H.R. (ser. A) at 13-14, P33.
Such as those which are available under the Lisbon Treaty to the UK and Ireland in the area of police and judicial cooperation.
The first enhanced cooperation has been launched in the area of the law applicable to divorce and legal separation: COM (2010) 104.
As read on Jean Quatremer's blog-entry 'Divorce: vers une coopration renforce?'. Available at http://bruxelles.blogs.liberation.fr/coulisses/2008/07/divorce-vers-un.html#more
Professor Horatia Muir-Watt calls this the "worldwide market in adjudication or dispute resolution" in her entry in the Gallileo Group's observations on the current Brussels I review, available at http:www.uniurb.it/seminaire/wp/?page_id=16.
See No. 11 above.
In a speech by the English Lord Chief Justice to the Society of Editors Annual Conference on 16.11.09 he stated "...I am not proud of reading, as I frequently do, that 'London is the Libel Capital of the world'. I do not regard it as a badge of honour. I am deeply unsympathetic to 'forum shopping'..."
No. 3 above at p. 7.
This relates very much to the current review of UK libel law outlined above.
There is anecdotal evidence, related on page 7 of the UK Libel Working Group's report, of an NGO considering a move to America to take advantage of its defamation laws. The Icelandic Modern Media Initiative passed by the Icelandic parliament on 15.06.2010 seeks to allow that country to "strongly position itself legally with regard to the protection of freedoms of expression and information". This positioning is both economically and ideologically motivated: "The legislative initiative outlined here is intended to make Iceland an attractive environment for the registration and operation of international press organisations, new media start-ups, human rights groups and internet data centres. It promises to strengthen our democracy through the power of transparency and to promote the nation's international standing and economy".
See Lillie & Reed v Newcastle City Council & Others (No.2), [2002] EWHC 1600 (QB) [2002] EWHC 1600 (QB). For the case outline go to http://www.5rb.com/case/Lillie--Reed-v-Newcastle-City-Council--Others-(No.2).
Council Directive 95/46/EC on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, OJ L 281, 23.11.1995, p. 31.
Case C-221/89 The Queen v Secretary of State for Transport, ex parte Factortame Ltd and Others [1991] ECR I-3905.
The rule stipulates that the law of a Member State shall apply when "the controller is not established on Community territory but, for the purposes of processing personal data makes use of equipment, automated or otherwise", situated in the Member State's territory unless it is only used for the purposes of transit.
(2004) EWCA Civ 75.
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