Croatian Journalists and Media Organisations Besieged by SLAPPs

She started in a children's TV show and went on to become a war correspondent. Now Maja Sever, the incoming President of the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ,) finds herself fighting a familiar Croatian battle on a European stage.

As a former President of the Croatian Journalists Association (CJA - NHD), she and her colleagues are familiar with the flood of abusive lawsuits designed to stop her and her colleagues from doing their work. In 2022, based on an annual survey of 26 Croatian media outlets, CJA reported that at least 951 law suits were active against journalists and media organisations in the country. many of which are likely to be SLAPPs.

Research conducted by the Coalition Against SLAPPs in Europe (CASE) has shown that in previous years around 90% of lawsuits against Croatian journalists have been dropped - a key indicator of a suit launched in order to harrass and intimidate rather than vindicate a genuine claim.

In total, plaintiffs are currently seeking some 10.3 million euros (10.76 million US dollas) in compensation against from Croatian journalists and media outlets. Damage to reputation or honour is the most common allegation – Croatia has criminal penalties for defamation - and plaintiffs include state officials at national and local level and even judges. Given the nature of the survey, there are likely to be further law suits that have not been reported.

“We are working intensively at all levels to pressure the government to change the criminal law. But, there is no political will to decriminalize defamation,” Sever told Blueprint for Free Speech after taking over her post at EFJ.

“The situation of SLAPPs in Croatia is not getting better. We do not have official data as such, which is also a problem because we do not have good cooperation with the courts, and we do not have the ability or capacity for a serious analysis,” she added.

In April, the European Commission put forward a program to protect journalists and human rights defenders from abusive court proceedings with a “cross border element”, including allowing judges to dismiss frivolous cases and penalties against plantiffs as a deterrent for misusing the judicial system.

The European Commission-funded Pioneering Anti-SLAPP Training for Freedom of Expression (PATFox) program was launched in June to provide training to legal professionals in 11 member states starting in the autumn, Croatia among them.

Croatia is among the countries where the number of registered SLAPPs appears to be highest although it is Malta – where murdered investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was facing dozens of suits at the time of her death – and Slovenia that have the highest SLAPP per capita figures across Europe, according to CASE research.