CEDH · CASELAW;COMMUNICATEDCASES;ENG — 10 septembre 2025

.s800EAC49 { font-size:12pt } .s53E9AB06 { margin-top:36pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:right; page-break-inside:avoid; page-break-after:avoid } .sBB9EE52A { font-family:Arial } .s32563E28 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt } .s5E1364CA { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:12pt; text-align:center; page-break-inside:avoid; page-break-after:avoid; font-size:14pt } .s339D85E6 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:14pt; text-align:center; page-break-inside:avoid; page-break-after:avoid } .s665E407E { margin-top:66pt; margin-bottom:14pt; text-align:center; page-break-inside:avoid; page-break-after:avoid } .s29100277 { font-family:Arial; font-weight:bold } .s10950C61 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-indent:14.2pt; text-align:justify } .sA36B60A1 { font-family:Arial; font-style:italic } Published on 29 September 2025   FIFTH SECTION Application no. 35931/24 N MEDIA A.S. against the Czech Republic lodged on 22 November 2024 communicated on 10 September 2025 SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE The application concerns the refusal by the Office of the President of the Republic to provide any information to the newspaper edited by the applicant company, and the dismissal, on varying grounds, of the applicant company’s administrative action lodged in this respect. On 21 May 2021 the Office of the President of the Republic published a statement “on combatting disinformation” in which it announced, inter alia , that it would no longer provide any information to certain media, including the online newspaper edited by the applicant company. Subsequently, journalists of that newspaper did not receive any response from the above Office to their SMS requests for information concerning the Office’s news events. In July 2021 the applicant company lodged an administrative action seeking to declare that the interference consisting in the above statement and the subsequent denial of access to information was unlawful. The first-instance court dismissed the action on account of its lack of competence, considering that the Office was not an administrative authority and that the applicant company should have sought protection of its right to information by way of a constitutional appeal. The applicant company’s cassation appeal was dismissed by the Supreme Administrative Court on the ground that in the present case the Office had not acted as an administrative authority because the journalists had not addressed it under the Free Access to Information Act (no. 106/1999); only requests lodged under that Act would attract protection of the administrative courts. The applicant company’s constitutional appeal was dismissed as manifestly ill-founded (decision no. I. ÚS 1030/24 of 24 July 2024). The Constitutional Court considered that it was only if the applicant company had been denied access to information under the Free Access to Information Act that it could rule on the question as to whether the State authorities’ obligation to provide information about their activities, set in Article 17 § 5 of the Czech Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms, had an autonomous content going beyond the scope of the above Act. In other words, administrative courts could offer protection against a denial of information under the Free Access to Information Act, not against a lack of response to SMS requests for information. Relying on Article 10 of the Convention, the applicant company complains that it has been selectively and arbitrarily denied important information which was routinely provided to media by the Office of the President of the Republic, and that the courts erred when they dismissed its administrative action with reference to the Free Access to Information Act which, in its view, was not applicable in the present case. QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES Has there been an interference with the applicant company’s freedom of expression, in particular its right to receive and impart information, within the meaning of Article 10 § 1 of the Convention (see, in particular, Magyar   Helsinki Bizottság v. Hungary   [GC], no.   18030/11, 8   November 2016)? If so, was that interference prescribed by law and necessary in terms of Article   10 §   2?