Von Hannover III: German courts’ decisions respected private and family life of Princess Caroline

EHRM, 19 september 2013, Von Hannover v Duitsland III.

Uit het persbericht: "In today’s Chamber judgment in the case of von Hannover v. Germany (no. 3) (application no. 8772/10), which is not final, the European Court of Human Rights held, unanimously, that there had been:

No violation of Article 8 (right to respect for private and family life) of the European Convention on Human Rights. The case concerned a complaint lodged by Princess Caroline von Hannover relating to the refusal of the German courts to grant an injunction prohibiting any further publication of a photograph of her and her husband taken without their knowledge while they were on holiday. The photograph was accompanied by an article about the trend amongst the very wealthy towards letting out their holiday homes. The Court held that the German courts had taken into consideration the essential criteria and the Court’s case-law in balancing the different interests at stake in the case.

Decision of the Court: [...] In its judgments in Axel Springer AG and Von Hannover (no. 2) the Court had set forth the relevant
criteria for balancing the right to respect for private life against the right to freedom of expression. These were: contribution to a debate of general interest, how well known the person concerned was, the subject of the report, the prior conduct of the person concerned, the content, form and consequences of the publication and, in the case of photographs, the circumstances in which they were taken.

The Court noted that in the present application the Federal Constitutional Court had taken the view that, while the photograph in question had not contributed to a debate of general interest, the same was not true of the article accompanying it, which reported on the current trend among celebrities towards letting out their holiday homes. The Federal Constitutional Court and, subsequently, the Federal Court of Justice had observed that the article was designed to report on that trend and that this conduct was apt to contribute to a debate of general interest. The Court also noted that the article itself did not contain information concerning the private life of the applicant or her husband, but focused on practical aspects relating to the villa and its letting.

It could not therefore be asserted that the article had merely been a pretext for publishing the photograph in question or that the connection between the article and the photograph had been purely contrived. The characterisation of the subject of the article as an event of general interest, first by the Federal Constitutional Court and then by the Federal Court of Justice, could not be considered unreasonable. The Court could therefore accept that the photograph in question had made a contribution to a debate of general interest.

As to how well known the applicant was, the Court pointed out that it had found on several occasions that the applicant and her husband were to be regarded as public figures who could not claim protection of their private lives in the same way as individuals unknown to the public.

Noting that the German courts had taken into consideration the essential criteria and the Court’s case-law in balancing the various interests at stake, the Court concluded that they had not failed to comply with their positive obligations and that there had been no violation of Article 8 of the Convention."

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