The European Court of Human Rights Is Betraying Its Purported Values
What a case in Georgia shows about the limits to free speech in Europe.
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Irakli Miladze, a food courier in Tbilisi, spent long shifts dodging not only the weather, but also fines for using bus lanes. They were the same bus lanes that government officials sped down in their fancy vehicles with impunity.
In late 2022, Miladze did what citizens in a modern democracy are supposed to be able to do: he took to social media and vented his frustrations. His central complaint was not merely that Tbilisi’s public transportation service is badly designed; it was that it is enforced with naked class bias. City hall employees, ministry officials, and State Security Service personnel were, he alleged in a TikTok video, “flying down the bus lane with tinted windows like they own the road,” while delivery drivers working twelve-hour shifts in the rain are fined for using the same lane to do their jobs. “You are acting like a bunch of motherfuckers who think you are better than everyone else,” Miladze said. “How exactly are you better than us? You are not better than us at all.”
The language throughout the video was, to put it mildly, unparliamentary. But despite warning viewers of offensive content, the video was shared 600 times and reached 100,000 viewers, evidently resonating among Georgians navigating the same chaotic traffic.
This did not amuse the impugned officials. Police were dispatched to Miladze’s house (he directed abusive language at the officers, which probably didn’t help his case) and Georgian courts ultimately fined him the equivalent of €180. Miladze took his case all the way to the European Court of Human Rights, hoping to benefit from its long-held view that freedom of expression protects ideas that “offend, shock or disturb.” Unfortunately for Miladze, the seven judges unanimously upheld the fine.
The ECHR’s reasoning deserves serious scrutiny. The judges found that while the video contained criticism of public policy, “a substantial portion of the recording consisted of extremely crude and sexually explicit verbal attacks … personally directed at the mayor and at unnamed police and security officers.” These segments “contained no argument or criticism but rather sustained verbal aggression devoid of informational value,” and “assume[d] the character of targeted and degrading attacks on identifiable individuals.” Such “wanton denigration” solely intended to insult, the court argued, falls outside the protection of freedom of expression.
The ECHR also suggested that public officials may enjoy special protection against verbal abuse: “civil servants must enjoy public confidence in conditions free of undue perturbation if they are to be successful in performing their tasks. It may therefore prove necessary to protect them from offensive and abusive verbal attacks in the course of their duties.”
That was not all. The court accepted the Georgian authorities’ assertion that the comments amounted to “an attack on the personal dignity of the individuals concerned and constituted violent verbal aggression rather than political criticism.” (Emphasis mine)
In other words, the ECHR conflated an expletive-laden social media rant with violence even though the comments—however offensive—included no threats, no intimidation, and no encouragement or incitement to actual violence.
Finally, the judges devoted critical attention to online speech and repeated previous case law to the effect that:
The internet’s capacity for instantaneous and wide dissemination may justify a stricter regulatory approach, including liability for defamatory or otherwise unlawful speech, because online content poses heightened risks to the enjoyment of human rights.
With regard to TikTok specifically, the ECHR emphasized the platform’s “rapid algorithmic amplification and particularly high youth engagement”—treating the platform’s design and reach as aggravating factors that weighed against the speaker.
The implication is stark: online speech, precisely because it travels further and faster, warrants more restriction, not less. That gets the logic of democratic accountability exactly backwards. A food courier raging at the mayor of Tbilisi in 1995 would have been heard by twenty people. That his 2022 equivalent reached thousands is not an argument for punishing him more severely—it is an argument for why robust protection of such speech matters more than ever.
Miladze may not be the most sympathetic free speech hero. He gave voice to legitimate grievances against the authorities with foul and offensive language. Defenders of the ECHR will point out that the court emphasized that the sanction was administrative rather than criminal, that the fine was modest, and that therefore the restriction on Miladze’s speech complied with the requirement of proportionality.
But these mitigating factors cannot compensate for the fact that the ECHR has seriously eroded the principled protection of free speech. The arguments the court gave are the same ones that 19th century European governments long used to silence radicals demanding universal suffrage, freedom of religion, equality before the law, and justice reforms—values that were hard won and that the ECHR is supposed to uphold.
The difference between living in a country where fierce criticism of the government is protected versus one in which it’s prohibited is striking. Anyone who has spent five minutes on social media knows that thousands of Americans express their views on their elected officials—including the president—in language that would make Miladze’s TikTok seem genteel. Under the standard the ECHR just blessed, all of them would be subject to legal action.
To understand why a free internet is vital for a free society, just look at Hungary. Earlier this year, Péter Magyar’s Tisza party won a two-thirds supermajority in the Hungarian parliament, sweeping away sixteen years of Viktor Orbán’s illiberal democracy. In theory, this should not have been possible. Orbán controlled eighty percent of Hungarian media and had restrictive laws against public protests, minorities, universities and NGOs. But there was one thing Orbán did not control: the internet. It was small, fearless online outlets that broke the corruption story that forced his president, Katalin Novak, to resign in 2024. It was a viral YouTube interview that launched Magyar’s political career. It was social media that allowed Tisza’s organic messaging to outcompete Fidesz’s well-funded propaganda machine. The very tools that the ECHR insists warrant more government control are the tools that just delivered the most important democratic victory in Europe this decade.
The court’s logic is even more disturbing given the current reality in Georgia, where a Putin-aligned government is cracking down on protest, civil society, and the media, and where social media is the only avenue left to the pro-democratic opposition. In response to the ECHR decision, the Georgian Young Lawyers Association, which represented Miladze, warned of a “severe human rights crisis” in the country. It highlighted that “administrative offense proceedings against individuals on grounds of insult” are now “routine for the Interior Ministry.”
Must Georgians fighting for democracy really show respect and polite deference to the government officials turning their country into a client state of Putin? That would seem to be the direction of travel. Europe is sleepwalking ever deeper into a free speech recession, guided by the very institutions supposed to sound the alarm.
Jacob Mchangama, a contributing writer at Persuasion, is the Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech, a research professor at Vanderbilt University, and a Senior Fellow at The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. His latest book, co-authored with Jeff Kosseff, is The Future of Free Speech.
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