The law also obliged these organisations to state, on their homepage and in all their publications, they are an ‘organisation in receipt of support from abroad’. The law basically imposed a duty to register and to provide the name of donors and the amount received on NGOs receiving funds from abroad. The case concerned the so-called “Transparency Law” adopted by the Hungarian Parliament in 2017. Very recently, the EU Court, underlined that the right to freedom of association “ constitutes one of the essential bases of a democratic and pluralist society, inasmuch as it allows citizens to act collectively in fields of mutual interest and in doing so to contribute to the proper functioning of public life”. To the contrary, in conclusion the Court stated that Austria was right to prioritise human rights over the common market because an outright ban on the demonstration would have constituted unacceptable interference with the fundamental rights of the demonstrators to gather and peacefully express their opinion in public. Not a single hint was given to any automatic preference of the economy over fundamental rights.
#Freedom of assembly examples free#
What arose in Luxembourg’s EU Court was the question of how “ to reconcile the requirements of the protection of fundamental rights in the Community with those arising from a fundamental freedom” specifically for the example of the free movement of goods. The demonstration – carried out with permission of the Austrian government – caused the closure of the essential EU transit route for four days. The traffic and pollution led the local inhabitants to organise a demonstration on the Brenner highway. On the other stood the interest of the local population, who suffer from the increasing air and noise pollution alongside the highway. On one side stood the transit lobby, representing over 6.000 of the lorries that, on an average day cross the Brenner Pass – the most important north-south-connection in the EU common market. In 2003, the EU Court in Luxembourg had to decide whether to give preference to the free movement of goods, or, the freedom of assembly. Does it? Well, let’s examine a test case.
If that was the case, EU law would clearly prioritise the common market over human rights. In some corners, EU-Europe has the reputation of being nothing more than a playground for business interests.
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