{"id":460130,"date":"2026-07-15T18:45:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T16:45:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2026\/07\/15\/italia-e-altri-13-paesi-in-procedura-dinfrazione-ue-sulla-direttiva-contro-le-querele-bavaglio\/"},"modified":"2026-07-15T19:09:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T17:09:11","slug":"italy-and-13-other-countries-are-facing-eu-infringement-proceedings-over-the-directive-against-gag-lawsuits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2026\/07\/15\/italy-and-13-other-countries-are-facing-eu-infringement-proceedings-over-the-directive-against-gag-lawsuits\/","title":{"rendered":"Italy and 13 other countries are facing EU infringement proceedings over the directive against gag lawsuits"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brussels \u2013 Italy and 13 other European Union member states have been issued with a yellow card over gag lawsuits, known as SLAPPs\u2014that is, unfounded and abusive legal actions aimed at silencing those acting in the public interest. The European Commission today (15 July) launched infringement proceedings by sending letters of formal notice to Italy<\/a> along with Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Ireland, Greece, Spain, Luxembourg, Hungary, the Netherlands, Austria, Portugal, Romania, and Slovakia. These countries have been formally accused of failing to notify the full transposition of the EU rules on the protection of people involved in public participation from manifestly unfounded legal actions or abusive legal proceedings<\/a> (EU Directive 2024\/1069 of 11 April 2024)<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Those targeted by SLAPPs include \u201cjournalists<\/a>, human rights defenders or civil society organisations,” and EU Directive 2024\/1069 provides the tools to enable them to defend themselves against \u201cmanifestly unfounded claims or abusive civil proceedings with cross-border implications.\u201d The rules also allow courts to dismiss manifestly unfounded claims at the early stages of proceedings and provide remedies for those targeted, as well as protection against judgments issued by third countries. <\/p>\n

Member States had until 7 May 2026 to transpose the directive into their national legislation, but to date, the 14 countries have not notified the Commission of its full transposition. The Commission is therefore sending letters of formal notice\u2014the documents certifying the infringement\u2014to the Member States concerned, which now have two months to respond and inform the Berlaymont Building of the full set of transposition measures they have adopted. In the absence of a satisfactory response, the Commission may decide to issue a reasoned opinion, an official notice in which the Commission formally declares that the country is in breach of European Union law. <\/p>\n

“The infringement proceedings launched by the European Commission against Italy<\/a> for failing to transpose the anti-SLAPP directive add to the long list of disasters under the Meloni<\/a> government”, said Gaetano Pedull\u00e0<\/strong>, MEP for the Five Star Movement. While the directive \u201cprotects journalists from intimidating legal action, such as frivolous lawsuits brought by those wielding significant political or economic power,\u201d in our country \u201cthis abuse is, unfortunately, an established practice that stifles freedom of information and fuels self-censorship among journalists,\u201d he added. According to Pedull\u00e0, press freedom in Italy \u201cis in a comatose state,\u201d as, in addition to the problem of frivolous lawsuits, there are \u201cmedia concentration, precarious employment, expired employment contracts, non-compliance with the EMFA regulations, handouts to friendly newspapers, including those owned by a member of the ruling coalition itself<\/strong>.\u201d For this reason, we must hope that \u201cthis procedure serves as a wake-up call for a government that fears free journalism and which must step down as soon as possible,\u201d he concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The countries have been formally accused of failing to notify the Commission that they have fully transposed EU rules on the protection of those involved in public participation\u2014such as journalists and activists\u2014from manifestly unfounded legal actions or abusive legal proceedings<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7908,"featured_media":460089,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[29788],"tags":[26180,25871,25815,26267,25833,26897,26929,27736,34870,25755,32142,26064,27493,26869,32274,34871,26527,27179,31284,26360,26870],"class_list":["post-460130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-diritti-en","tag-austria-en","tag-inbulgaria","tag-czechrepublic-en","tag-direttiva-anti-slapp","tag-news-parliament-en","tag-gaetano-pedulla-en","tag-giorgia-meloni-en","tag-greece-en","tag-irlanda-en","tag-lussemburgo-en","tag-movimento-cinque-stelle","tag-paesi-bassi-en","tag-portugal-en","tag-romania-en","tag-slovakia-and","tag-spain-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7908"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=460130"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":460131,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460130\/revisions\/460131"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/460089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}