TrustHLT/LaCour huggingface dataset:
GR1 (Government): This was a large-scale criminal activity and one of the largest in the Czech Republic, then I can well imagine that it was protected under the security law.
GR1 (Government): As to the state of the criminal proceedings, I can only say, I would repeat, in fact, what the applicant has said.
GR1 (Government): We nonetheless know the operative part of the judgment given by the Court of Appeal.
GR1 (Government): So we know with certainty how the applicant was convicted.
GR1 (Government): And as to the fact that these proceedings, these criminal proceedings, have already lasted quite a while, I can only say that he was given a conditional punishment because of the fact that these proceedings have taken so much time.
GR1 (Government): I don't know.
GR1 (Government): I still feel that I may have skipped something.
GR1 (Government): But I believe that this must be more or less all to address.
GR1 (Government): I would say finally that the applicant has submitted additional requests for just satisfaction on the basis under the head of costs and expenses.
GR1 (Government): And I would like to ask the Green Chamber to give the government the opportunity to comment on this request for just satisfaction.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): Merci beaucoup, M. Schorm.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): L'arrêt s'a rendu ultérieurement.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): I declare open the public hearing on the merits in the case of Magyar-Kefarkó Kutyapárt versus Hungary.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): The application was lodged with the court on 16th December 2016 under Article 34 of the convention by a Hungarian political party, Magyar-Kefarkó Kutyapárt.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): The application was allocated to the fourth section of the court, pursuant to Rule 52, paragraph 1 of the rules of the court.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): This section delivered its judgment on 23rd January 2018.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): On 23 April 2018, the government requested that the case be referred to the ground chamber in accordance with Article 43 of the convention.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): And the panel of the ground chamber accepted the request on 28 May 2018.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): The applicant political party is represented by Mr. Csaba Tordai, Mr.Tamás Fazekas, and Mr. Balázs Tóth, counsel, assisted by Mr. Daniel Szabó, advisor.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): The respondent government are represented by their agent, Mr. Zoltán Tallódi, assisted by Mrs. Mónika Weller, co-agent.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): I also welcome a group of judges from Russia and a delegation of the Italian Judicial Council of Military Justice, who are on study visit to the court.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): Having consulted the representatives of the applicant political party and the agent of the government, I have determined the order of addresses as follows.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): Mr. Fazekas for the applicant political party will speak first, and then Mr. Tallódi for the government.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): I would explain that in addition to interpreting in the two official languages of the court, English and French, interpreting into Russian has been authorized for the benefit of the group of judges from Russia attending this hearing.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): I call Mr. Fazekas, please, you have the floor.
AP1 (Applicant): my name is Tomás Fazekas, and as a representative of the Magyar Kétvarka Kutyapárt, I would like to present you supplementary information to the written contribution of the applicant in four separated but interconnected aspects of the case.
AP1 (Applicant): At the heart of the case is the applicant who acted as an intermediary, facilitating highly protected political expression by sharing photographs by a mobile application.
AP1 (Applicant): First, I will start with a brief outline of the applicant's understanding of the main questions as to the applicability of Article 10 of the Convention to the present case.
AP1 (Applicant): In the second part, I will argue that the mobile phone application corresponded to a social need to show and share voters casting their vote and thus emphasize the importance of democratic participation.
AP1 (Applicant): Third, I will describe some important features of the mobile phone application, which made it technologically impossible for anyone to link a voter to his or her vote.
AP1 (Applicant): This was the primary reason why the national authorities found no violation of the fairness of the election or voting secrecy.
AP1 (Applicant): It is the applicant's opinion that in the absence of these concerns, there was no legitimate aim to curtail the right of free expression of the applicant.
AP1 (Applicant): I will finish with a summary of those characteristics of the Hungarian election system, which are also decisive in the present case, and I will put it into international context.
AP1 (Applicant): In this part, I will point to the fact that unlike many other states, Hungary's legislation regulates voting secrecy as a favorable right, not an obligation of the voter.
AP1 (Applicant): This means that the decision by the court in the present case finding a violation does not necessarily mean that all member states should allow photographs to be taken of ballot papers.
AP1 (Applicant): Honorable Court, let me begin with the applicability of Article 10 to the present case.
AP1 (Applicant): We live in an age of information society.
AP1 (Applicant): Social media allows people to easily share information on every aspect of their lives.
AP1 (Applicant): Be it the moving scenes of family life, banal everyday events, or the most pressing issues of public discourse, there is an enormous need in society to impart and receive information, ideas, and feelings directly with their friends, friends of friends, or everyone, and to receive similar content published by others, irrespective of the physical distance between them.
AP1 (Applicant): Parallel with the developments of the technical solutions, social media has become an important tool in interaction between people.
AP1 (Applicant): All this is true for textual and visual content alike.
AP1 (Applicant): Imparting and receiving ideas and information is part of social communication, regardless of their form.
AP1 (Applicant): A photograph may express countless aspects of an event that is impossible to describe with short text and makes it easier to comprehend the message.
AP1 (Applicant): As we know it for long, a picture is worth a thousand words.
AP1 (Applicant): Due to technical limits, publishing pictures used to be a privilege of professionals, but at the advent of smartphones equipped with high-resolution cameras extended direct social communication beyond written text.
AP1 (Applicant): Sharing textual and visual content in social media is beyond doubt protected by the right to freedom of expression, both on the side of the publisher and the receiver.
AP1 (Applicant): This communication is, however, only possible if intermediary platforms are available.
AP1 (Applicant): According to the well-established case law of the court, freedom of expression not only protects the person imparting or receiving the information, but also the platform through which the information is imparted or received.
AP1 (Applicant): The publisher of a newspaper or an online news portal and the broadcaster of a TV station may rely on Article 10 of the Convention, in line with the consistent practice of the court.
AP1 (Applicant): The applicant sees no reason to conclude otherwise regarding the publisher of a mobile phone application, allowing the distribution of information in social media.
AP1 (Applicant): By the development and maintenance of an application which allowed users to share textual and visual content with others, the applicant exercises right falling within the scope of Article 10 of the Convention.
AP1 (Applicant): All of this is true, even though the Hungarian Constitutional Court found, with the smallest majority possible and without any reference or consideration of the practice of this court, that not the freedom of expression of the applicants, but that of others and that of users of the application was curtailed.
AP1 (Applicant): It is the applicant's position that this finding of the Constitutional Court is incompatible with the Convention and the practice of this court.
AP1 (Applicant): As everywhere else, freedom of expression is not an absolute in social media either.
AP1 (Applicant): Freedom of expression may be restricted for reasons laid down in paragraph 2 of the Article 10 as interpreted by the court.
AP1 (Applicant): It is necessary that these limitations should be prescribed by law based on a legitimate aim and necessary in a democratic society.
AP1 (Applicant): Honorable court, at this junction, I would like to turn to the second part of my submission in which I wish to show the contribution of the applicant's mobile phone application to the democratic process.
AP1 (Applicant): With the spread of social media and camera-equipped smartphones, the need arose all over the world among voters to share photographs with other members of the body politic, portraying them as casting a vote and sometimes also the content of this vote.
AP1 (Applicant): It is enough to look at the popular social media sites during any election to find an enormous number of selfies and pictures with different hashtags on polling stations and ballot papers.
AP1 (Applicant): Some of these pictures are shared by celebrities and politicians, but a great number of them are taken by ordinary citizens.
AP1 (Applicant): Sharing with others the act of casting a vote and the content of that vote is political speech because it tells the story of an event of contemporary public life and the author's opinion about it.
AP1 (Applicant): Political speech is the most protected core of Article 10 of the Convention.
AP1 (Applicant): The development and operating of a mobile phone application, expressly allowing political communication through social media, triggers the hate and protection of Article 10 of the Convention.
AP1 (Applicant): Democracy becomes stronger if more and more people spend time and effort participating in election and referendums.
AP1 (Applicant): And as a result, citizens become more familiar with democratic processes.
AP1 (Applicant): The fact that citizens are proud to vote and consider it as an important part of their identity, so important that they wish to show it to others, this is a development which should be welcomed.
AP1 (Applicant): This behavior of the voters paint a positive image of participating in public life among family, friends, and the broader public.
AP1 (Applicant): This reinforces democracy by encouraging others to take part in election and referendums.
AP1 (Applicant): The mobile phone application served to protect the democratic process in one additional way.
AP1 (Applicant): Users were allowed to report through the application if they cast an invalid vote and also the country where they cast that vote.
AP1 (Applicant): The applicant then was able to compare aggregate number of reported invalid votes to the official numbers on a county level, and therefore, serving as a public watchdog, checked the works of election officials.
AP1 (Applicant): This was important because fear of election fraud was widespread among citizens.
AP1 (Applicant): Following the referendum, the applicant, after careful analysis of the aggregate data, could confirm that, as to his knowledge, the counting of the votes was correct.
AP1 (Applicant): Because this reporting function of the application was broadly publicized before the referendum, it acted as a deterrent and preventive action.
AP1 (Applicant): The applicant, by developing and operating the mobile phone application, could alleviate the rumors on election fraud and thus reinforce trust in the democratic process.
AP1 (Applicant): As every other act of freedom of expression, taking a photograph of the ballot paper also carries risk with it.
AP1 (Applicant): If the photograph's portrait is a citizen and also his or her vote, the secrecy of the vote might be violated, and it may open a door for election fraud.
AP1 (Applicant): The fairness of the elections and secrecy as a part of it are closely connected to the right to vote.
AP1 (Applicant): This right, as the right of others, can be regarded as a legitimate aim for limiting freedom of expression under paragraph two of article 10.
AP1 (Applicant): But in the present case, this is not applicable for reasons discussed in the next part of the pleading.
AP1 (Applicant): So, honorable court, in the third part of my contribution, I wish to describe some important features of the mobile phone application, which made it technologically impossible for anyone to link a voter and his or her vote, and consequently, there was no legitimate aim for the interference with the applicant's rights under article 10.
AP1 (Applicant): The applicant, as a political party, was aware of the need for sharing photographs of the ballot, and at the same time, of the need of preventing the violation of voting secrecy.
AP1 (Applicant): The reason to develop the application was precisely to satisfy this social need by maintaining the secrecy of the vote.
AP1 (Applicant): The application was available in Apple's App Store and in Google's Play service, where voters were free to decide whether to download it or not, if they wanted to be a part of this kind of communication, either as a distributor or receiver of images.
AP1 (Applicant): The application did not store any information on the voters, which might have been used by the applicant or the technical intermediaries to identify the voter.
AP1 (Applicant): No username, no GPS geolocation data, no telephone number, and no IP addresses were stored in the application.
AP1 (Applicant): The users of the application could use the back camera of the mobile phone to take pictures, thus discouraging the taking of selfies, that is, pictures of themselves.
AP1 (Applicant): The user was then able to place a text on the image, either a text from a predefined selection of phrases, or his or her own thoughts.
AP1 (Applicant): This picture, with the text applied on it, then became available to other users via the application.
AP1 (Applicant): This technical solution guaranteed, by default, that no pictures were distributed, where the identity of a user and the vote cast was available at the same time.
AP1 (Applicant): As a further level of protection, the mobile phone application allowed the applicant to delete pictures if a malevolent user were to upload a picture violating voting secrecy.
AP1 (Applicant): There was, however, no need to do so.
AP1 (Applicant): Among the 4,000 pictures shared by the application, not a single one allowed the voter and the vote cast to be linked.
AP1 (Applicant): This was the reason why the Curia found that the application did violate neither the fairness of the election nor the secrecy of vote, and consequently explicitly overruled the parts of the decision of the National Election Commission finding a violation of these principles.
AP1 (Applicant): Moreover, the report of National Election Commission to the police against the application was dismissed on the very same reasons by a decision approved by the prosecutor's office.
AP1 (Applicant): As the national authorities and courts find no violation of the fairness of the election or the secrecy of the vote, based on the procedural margin of appreciation granted to states, there is no reason for the court to depart from these findings.
AP1 (Applicant): It is even more so because the government also did not question these findings of the national authorities.
AP1 (Applicant): Based on what I have just summarized, neither the fairness of the election nor the secrecy of vote might serve as a legitimate aim to restrict freedom of expression.
AP1 (Applicant): The national procedure did not establish the violation of these principles.
AP1 (Applicant): The sanction was based solely on the argument that the purpose of the ballot paper was to cast a vote, not to take a picture of it.
AP1 (Applicant): The purpose of an object cannot limit what can be said about it.
AP1 (Applicant): To argue that absurdum, the purpose of fruits in a bowl is to eat them.
AP1 (Applicant): But this purpose cannot be a legitimate aim for a prohibition of taking photographs of the fruits.
AP1 (Applicant): A still life painting of fruits cannot be deemed to violate the principle of the proper exercise of rights, regardless of the original purpose of the fruits.
AP1 (Applicant): The same is true for the ballot paper.
AP1 (Applicant): The purpose of the ballot cannot influence or make illegal the photograph of it or the debate on it.
AP1 (Applicant): The applicant believes that its freedom of expression has been, therefore, limited without legitimate aim.
AP1 (Applicant): Honorable court, in the last part of my argument, I will describe some important characteristics of the Hungarian election legislation and put it into international context.
AP1 (Applicant): Although the National Court did explicitly rule that the fairness of the election and the secrecy of the vote has not been violated, the applicant is of the opinion that the Hungarian legal regime on the secrecy of the vote is relevant for the determination of this case.
AP1 (Applicant): As this court has emphasized on several occasions, there are various ways of organizing and running electoral systems.
AP1 (Applicant): The choice of electoral regime linked to the historical developments of the state closely reflects its vision of democracy.
AP1 (Applicant): Given the lack of common European approach, states enjoy a wide margin of appreciation in regulating electoral matters.
AP1 (Applicant): The way a given state regulates electoral procedures inevitably impacts freedom of expression in relation to elections.
AP1 (Applicant): However, the wide margin of appreciation states enjoy under Article III, Protocol Number 1, does not extend to freedom of expression.
AP1 (Applicant): They are only entitled to draw the necessary conclusions flowing from their choice of an electoral regime to the exercise of freedom of expression.
AP1 (Applicant): The protection of Article 10 shall not be diminished with reference to the right to free elections.
AP1 (Applicant): The Hungarian legislature exercised its wide margin of appreciation when it decided that, like in some European states, the secrecy of the vote will be only a favorable right to the citizen, not an obligation.
AP1 (Applicant): This was the reason why the Curia ruled in this case that voters are entitled to share the fact that they have cast a vote or even publicize the content of the vote.
AP1 (Applicant): According to the Curia, taking a photograph of the ballot paper was not illegal because it violated the secrecy of the vote, but merely because the purpose of the ballot paper was not to be the subject of photographs.
AP1 (Applicant): Hungarian election law does not oblige voters to use a closed polling booth to fill in the ballots, does not prohibit the presence of more than one person in the polling booth, and does not require the use of envelopes for casting the vote, but explicitly allows the voter to ask for help in filling in the ballot from anyone or from the members of the polling station commission.
AP1 (Applicant): The appropriateness of this regulation may very well be contested.
AP1 (Applicant): Precisely because of these permissive rules, there were numerous reports in the past on election fraud, mostly among poorer voters.
AP1 (Applicant): However, the national legislation remained unamended, and the parliament and the government did not wish to change it.
AP1 (Applicant): In a legal system where the secrecy of the vote is just a right, but not an obligation, the prohibition of taking pictures of the ballot cannot be justified, even if it links the vote with the voter, and would therefore be a waiver of the voter's right to secrecy.
AP1 (Applicant): To put it otherwise, if a member state does not prohibit the voter to disclose his or her vote in person to anyone, it cannot be necessary to prohibit the photographing of the same ballot paper.
AP1 (Applicant): Other member states, however, which regulate voting secrecy as an obligation, enjoy wider freedom in sanctioning photographs of the ballot paper.
AP1 (Applicant): A judgment by the court concluding that in the present case, the Hungarian government, taking into consideration its election system, have violated the applicant's right to freedom of expression, will not imply that all the other member states have to allow photographing of ballot papers.
AP1 (Applicant): Member states are allowed to limit the free expression and reception of political opinions only if they comply with the convention.
AP1 (Applicant): Even if the limitations of freedom of expression would have been prescribed by law, and would have served a legitimate aim in this case, neither of these criteria was met, national authorities, including courts, would have had to balance the competing rights.
AP1 (Applicant): This balancing exercise was not undertaken by the national authorities in the present case at all.
AP1 (Applicant): Had the balancing exercise been carried out, it would have been clear that when a member state does not deem it necessary to enforce the secrecy of the vote, even against the will of the voter, the communication in pictures about the same vote may not be restricted.
AP1 (Applicant): Had the balancing exercise been carried out, it would have been obvious and unquestionable that in the present case, nothing jeopardized the fairness or the secrecy of the elections.
AP1 (Applicant): Honorable Court, an interference with the right to freedom of expression violates the convention if this limitation is not prescribed by law, has not legitimate aim, or was not necessary in a democratic society.
AP1 (Applicant): As I have shown, the Hungarian government failed to meet all three conditions of the convention's limitation test.
AP1 (Applicant): The limitation of the applicant's right was not prescribed by law.
AP1 (Applicant): There are no direct prohibition in the Hungarian law of making photographs on the ballot.
AP1 (Applicant): An expressly non-binding interpretation of the law by the National Electoral Commission cannot serve as a legal basis of the limitation.
AP1 (Applicant): Moreover, under Hungarian law, voting secrecy is not an obligation, but a waiveable right of the citizen.
AP1 (Applicant): If a citizen can freely choose to fill in the ballot paper outside the polling booth in the presence of others, or to show his or her ballot to anyone, the same voter should also be free to take a photograph of it and distribute it on social media.
AP1 (Applicant): The Hungarian authorities sanctioned the applicant for violating the vague notion of exercising rights in accordance with their purpose.
AP1 (Applicant): This notion, however, does not fulfill the criteria of law within the meaning of Article 10, because it does not foreseeably prohibit taking photographs of the ballot paper, as we provided a detailed explanation of this in our written submission.
AP1 (Applicant): For this reason, the limitation of the applicant's rights was not prescribed by law.
AP1 (Applicant): Second, the sanctioning of the applicants also did not pursue a legitimate aim.
AP1 (Applicant): Voting secrecy or the fairness of the election might very well serve, as the right of others, a legitimate ground for curtailing freedom of expression.
AP1 (Applicant): The mobile phone application in the present case, however, made it impossible to link a voter to his or her vote.
AP1 (Applicant): And consequently, the highest Hungarian court ruled that these principles were not violated.
AP1 (Applicant): The reasons for the sanction, the purpose of the ballot paper does not correspond to any legitimate aim listed in the paragraph 2 of Article 10.
AP1 (Applicant): The Hungarian authorities, therefore, had no legitimate ground to limit the right of freedom of expression of the applicant and have violated its right under Article 10 of the convention.