SECOND SECTION
CASE OF GOSPOČIĆ v. CROATIA
(Application no. 18827/21)
 
 
 
 
 
 
JUDGMENT
 
STRASBOURG
17 June 2025
 
This judgment is final but it may be subject to editorial revision. In the case of Gospočić v. Croatia,
The European Court of Human Rights (Second Section), sitting as a Committee composed of:
 Jovan Ilievski, President,
 Péter Paczolay,
 Davor Derenčinović, judges,
and Dorothee von Arnim, Deputy Section Registrar,
Having regard to:
the application (no. 18827/21) against the Republic of Croatia lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) on 29 March 2021 by a Croatian national, Ms Darinka Gospočić (“the applicant”), who was born in 1965, lives in Stubičke Toplice and was represented by Mr M. Križanović, a lawyer practising in Zagreb;
the decision to give notice of the complaint concerning freedom of expression to the Croatian Government (“the Government”), represented by their Agent, Ms Š. Stažnik, and to declare inadmissible the remainder of the application;
the parties’ observations;
Having deliberated in private on 27 May 2025,
Delivers the following judgment, which was adopted on that date:
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
1. The case concerns the applicant’s right to freedom of expression in connection with her criminal conviction for an offence of defamation. 2. The applicant’s neighbours constructed a farm on which they raise wild game (fallow deer). The applicant maintained that the farm had been built illegally and that she has been exposed to unpleasant smells and excessive noise from the animals. She had lodged several complaints against the neighbours and local officials, alleging various unlawful actions on their part, but her complaints were dismissed. 3. In 2017 the applicant was invited to a land surveyor’s office concerning a survey conducted of the neighbours’ farm. Expressing her disagreement with the survey, she uttered, in front of three other people, that her neighbours were “criminals, who were in mafia with the town chairman, and who had conspired to commit criminal offences for their personal gain”. 4. Following a private action by the neighbours, on 8 February 2019 the Zlatar Municipal Court found the applicant guilty of defamation (teško sramoćenje), a criminal offence under Article 148(2) of the Penal Code. She was convicted to a suspended fine in the amount equivalent to 30 times her daily income, that is, 3,000 Croatian kunas (HRK; approximately 400 euros (EUR)). The criminal court noted that she had filed numerous complaints against her neighbours and the town chairman and that she could therefore not be convicted of slander (kleveta), since it could not be shown that she had been aware that her statements had been untrue. However, her statements, which she had uttered in front of three other persons, were nonetheless susceptible of causing harm to her neighbours’ honour and reputation. It further held that, since those statements concerned her neighbours’ personal and family circumstances, she was not allowed to attempt to prove their veracity nor were there any serious reasons for which she held them to be true – i.e., circumstances which could exclude the unlawfulness of her act. 5. Her appeal, in which she argued that the first-instance court erred in the assessment of the evidence, maintaining that she had never uttered the impugned statements, was dismissed by the Varaždin County Court’s judgment of 27 August 2019, which endorsed the reasoning of the Municipal Court. 6. In her constitutional complaint, the applicant alleged, inter alia, a violation of her right to freedom of expression, arguing that the criminal courts not only failed to differentiate between a factual statement and a value judgment but also failed to establish that her neighbours had suffered any damage which could serve as a basis for her conviction. By a decision of 30 September 2020, notified to the applicant’s representative on 21 October 2020, the Constitutional Court declared her constitutional complaint inadmissible. In examining her fairness complaint, the Constitutional Court held that the applicant had failed to raise already in her appeal that her statements were to be regarded as value judgments and that therefore she had not properly exhausted domestic remedies. As regards her freedom of expression complaint, noting that the exercise of one’s right to freedom of expression should not endanger the right to reputation of others, the Constitutional Court declared it manifestly ill-founded. 7. Meanwhile, the applicant’s neighbours also instituted civil proceedings against her for the same statements and, by a final judgment of 3 March 2020, the applicant was ordered to pay them damages in the amount of HRK 6,000 (approximately EUR 800). 8. Before the Court, the applicant complained that her criminal conviction for the offence of defamation amounted to a violation of her right to freedom of expression.

Outcome for Article 10: violation