Hate speech by politicians in the caselaw of the european court of human rights

Resumo

This paper examines how, in cases concerning hate speech by politicians, the European Court of Human Rights resolves the dilemma of, on the one hand, providing a high level of protection to political speech and, on the other, protecting persons/groups from discrimination and intolerance. The Court applies two distinct approaches: sole application of Article 10 and (in)direct recourse to Article 17. It conciliates the high-level protection of political speech with the unprotectedness of hate speech by: (1) accepting that it may be necessary to apply hate speech restrictions to politicians in order to combat discrimination and intolerance, but (2) carefully scrutinising the necessity of such restrictions to ensure that the democratic process is not undermined. However, careful scrutiny is arguably better achieved through the sole application of Article 10.