The ECHR awarded compensation due to the blocking of the second website of the Daily Journal

The European Court of Human Rights ruled on a complaint against the blocking of the second website of the Daily Journal and awarded the owner of the online publication 7.5 thousand euros as compensation for moral damage. The resolution was published on the court’s website, and the SOVA Information and Analytical Center drew attention to it.

In March 2014, the Prosecutor General's Office ordered Roskomnadzor to block the website of the Daily Journal (ej.ru) and all its known mirrors. The site owner challenged this blocking in the ECHR in the case of Flavus and others v. Russia. The court decided that there was no legal basis for restricting access as it interfered with the right to freedom of expression.

In 2015, the owners of the Daily Journal created a new website (ej2015.ru), and in November 2017 it was blocked on the basis of the same request from the Prosecutor General’s Office from March 2014.

The ECHR indicated that the request of the Prosecutor General's Office from 2014 did not contain links to specific pages of the site, in addition, only new information was published on the second site, so the decision of 2014 could not be applied to it. The court also emphasized that the concept of “mirror” is not defined in Russian legislation, and the first blocking of the Daily Journal was unfounded.

• “Daily Journal” is a Russian online publication that publishes journalistic and analytical articles by political scientists, economists and journalists.
• In 2022, Vladimir Putin signed a law allowing the Russian government not to implement ECHR decisions taken after March 15, 2022, the day the Russian Federation left the Council of Europe. Despite this, the ECHR continues to consider complaints from Russian citizens if violations of the European Convention occurred before September 16, 2022.