- The term SLAPPs refers to those unfounded or exaggerated legal actions brought by powerful individuals, pressure groups, companies and state bodies with the intention of intimidating, silencing and deterring critical voices that openly denounce issues of public interest, exhausting their remedies.
- On 31 January 2024, from 9:00 to 11:00 CET, the conference "Improving Anti-SLAPP Defence: Lessons learned from the PATFox Project" will take place at the European Parliament, Room ASP 5G1.
- The event celebrates the closing of the European project PATFox (https://www.antislapp.eu/about) project, aimed at training legal professionals from 11 European countries in anti-SLAPP defense.
- The training materials are available free of charge on the project website (https://www.antislapp.eu/curriculum-hub).
MADRID, Spain, Jan. 25, 2024, developed by Fundación Internacional Baltasar Garzón (FIBGAR), will take place at the European Parliament, Room ASP 5G1.
The event is co-hosted by Ramona Strugariu MEP, rapporteur for the European Freedom of the Media Act, and Tiemo Wölken MEP, rapporteur for the Anti-SLAPP Directive.
Europe has recognised that SLAPPs are an increasingly worrying threat to democracy across Europe. Just over a month ago, the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the EU and the European Parliamentreached political agreement on a directive to protect journalists and human rights defenders from these vexatious tactics.
In 2022, in response to the call for action on training and awareness-raising for legal professionals included in Recommendation, adopted by the European Commission, 11 civil society organisations created a new pan-European consortium, Pioneering Anti-SLAPP Training for Freedom of Expression.
Co-funded by the EU, and led by the Spanish NGO FIBGAR, PATFox has designed, developed and implemented the first European anti-SLAPP curriculum aimed at training legal professionals on the legal and non-legal challenges posed by claims against public participation in order to properly identify and contrast this form of abuse.
Materials are available free of charge at: https://www.antislapp.eu/curriculum-hub
SLAPPs, a phenomenon unknown to legal practitioners
The trainings, organised across Europe starting in November 2022, have shown that in many cases legal practitioners are still unaware of the SLAPPs phenomenon. It is therefore essential to provide specific training to enable them to identify legal actions against public participation.
Alessia Schiavon, Executive Director of FIBGAR, comments that "legal empowerment is a crucial part of the transformation needed to address SLAPPs. Legal professionals play a critical role in defending human rights and fundamental freedoms, but when it comes to SLAPPs, most of the time they do not have the knowledge and skills to successfully defend their clients in court."
Therefore, in the framework of the PATFox project, hundreds of legal professionals have been trained in 11 EU Member States (Germany, Malta, Cyprus, Slovakia, Spain, Poland, Slovenia, Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary). The curriculum materials have also been presented at universities, professional associations and major conferences in the project countries and beyond.
The event will bring together the PATFox consortium partners to present the main achievements and legacy of the project. In addition, lawyer Julie Goffin from the International Union of Lawyers (UIA) Rule of Law Institute, and academic Eleonora di Franco, from the Department of International and European Law at Maastricht University, will speak about the value of the materials produced under the project and the need to further develop and support pioneering projects such as PATFox.
Registration for the event is mandatory and can be done online through this link by Friday 26th: https://forms.gle/BcxJt4mAPCg2fdoP7
The agenda is available here.
More information about the PATFox project at: www.antislapp.eu/
For further information: comunicacion@fibgar.org
