There are currently at least 951 active lawsuits against media outlets and individual journalists in Croatia, with plaintiffs asking courts to award them a total of about 77.4 million kuna (€10.2 million) in damages, the national association of journalists HND said on Wednesday.

Head of HND, Hrvoje Zovko, said that the sheer number of lawsuits was concerning.

“What we have here is a culture of suing journalists and media outlets, which amounts to systematic aggression, in order to intimidate journalists and force them into self-censorship,” state agency Hina quoted Zovko as saying.

People suing the media include local officials, politicians, and even court judges, Zovko said, adding that “they will not succeed in stopping free journalism, because investigative articles uncover scandals on a daily basis.”

Croatia is the worst country in Europe in terms of SLAPP (strategic lawsuits against public participation) lawsuits and HND demands an “unconditional decriminalisation of defamation” because it facilitates manipulation, Zovko said, also pointing to the legal doctrine of emotional distress, which he said no expert has been able to investigate, and which is “best treated with hundreds of thousands, or millions of kuna in damages.”

Zovko said he thought that the actual number of lawsuits exceeds 1,100, Hina said, without clarifying. The latest survey asking news professionals about lawsuits covered 26 media outlets. Zovko said that the first such survey, conducted four years ago, showed that there were 1,163 active lawsuits against journalists and media outlets. Then the number dropped to 905 in 2019, 924 in 2020, and now 951 in 2021.

Hanza Media, the company best known for publishing the major daily Jutarnji List, holds the record with 443 active lawsuits against them, each one seeking about 95,000 kuna for damages, on average. The publisher of the other major daily Vecernji List and a tabloid 24 Sata, Styria, came second, with 196 lawsuits active against them, with nearly 20 million kuna demanded for damages. The longest-running still active lawsuit began 32 years ago.

Vanja Juric of the European Commission’s expert group formed to tackle SLAPP said that the problem was in the way that courts apply and interpret the lesgislation regulating defamation and libel, and that the only solution to this problem has to be in the systematic and constant education of judges, lawyers. and journalists.

(€1 = 7.57 kuna)