Actual Madrid don’t lose many battles in Europe however they misplaced one on Friday when the European Courtroom of Justice (ECJ) dominated towards them of their long-running row with French newspaper Le Monde.
In a ruling with extensive potential implications for press freedom, the Luxembourg-based court docket determined that monetary damages awarded to Madrid by a Spanish court docket in 2014 for alleged defamation have been “disproportionate” and risked “deterring the press”.
The Spanish court docket had ordered the newspaper to pay the membership €390,000 in damages, with the journalist of the article ordered to pay €33,000.
With Le Monde refusing to pay, Madrid took the battle to the French courts, the place a court docket in Paris initially backed the Spanish court docket’s ruling, just for an attraction court docket to reverse that call, saying it breached the European Union’s Constitution of Elementary Rights, particularly the freedoms of the press and expression.
Madrid appealed towards this determination at France’s highest court docket, the Courtroom of Cassation, claiming the decrease French court docket couldn’t evaluation the Spanish court docket’s determination, solely implement it. This prompted the Courtroom of Cassation to refer the matter to the ECJ.
Its verdict couldn’t be clearer and it ought to carry this lengthy row to a conclusion.
“The enforcement of a judgment ordering a journalist and a newspaper editor to pay compensation for damages have to be refused to the extent that it infringes freedom of the press,” the ECJ mentioned in a media launch.
The dispute really goes again to 2006, when Le Monde printed an article titled “Dopage: le soccer apres le cyclisme” — or “Doping: first biking, now soccer” — which claimed there have been hyperlinks between 4 Spanish golf equipment, together with Madrid, and Spanish physician Eufemiano Fuentes.
The latter was on the centre of arguably the most important doping scandal within the historical past {of professional} biking earlier than Lance Armstrong’s fall from grace a couple of years later, as a Spanish police investigation often called “Operation Puerto” implicated dozens of prime riders and groups in a complicated blood-doping community.
Nevertheless, whereas the investigation and subsequent legal circumstances centered on biking, Fuentes himself talked about having purchasers in a variety of sports activities and it was that angle Le Monde pursued in December 2006.
The article, which remains to be obtainable on-line, was accompanied by a cartoon of a bike owner sporting Spanish colors, surrounded by little footballers and syringes, and it named Barcelona and Madrid as two of the golf equipment that had an alleged reference to Fuentes.
Each Barcelona and Madrid have at all times denied doping and having any reference to the infamous physician, who was discovered responsible of endangering public well being in 2013, solely to be cleared on attraction three years later, and have additionally strongly rejected any claims of doping.
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(Denis Doyle/Getty Photos)
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