270 / 300
268
The Court stated that the decision of a Swedish court confirming the termination of
the tenancy agreement constituted an interference with Article 10 of the Convention,
despite of the fact that this interference was both prescribed by law – the Swedish
Land Code – and pursued a legitimate aim – to protect the right of others. In the
proportionality test, however, the judges weighed the right of the immigrants to follow
the TV programs in their native language (para 44) against the safety and esthetic
concerns of the landlord: According to the decision, the dish which did not pose any real
safety threat was installed in an area with no “particular aesthetic aspirations” (para 47).
Consequently, the eviction from the flat could not be considered proportionate to
the aim pursued. The applicants claimed 6.500 Eur in respect of pecuniary damage
connected with the increased costs to and from work; the Court accepted this claim.
Furthermore, the Court awarded the applicants 5.000 Eur for non-pecuniary damage.
This unanimous decision was relevant for the protection of the right to receive
information from direct broadcasting satellite as its model can be applied against
excessive prohibitory actions of the authorities against receiving satellite installations.
Especially interesting is again the part in which the Court raises the question whether
the applicants had any other means to receive comparable information from other
media – the newspaper or radio programs (para 45): It concluded that newspaper or
radio cover only part of information available via TV satellite broadcast and cannot “in
any way” be equated with the latter. It means that in this decision, the Court set the
protection of TV direct broadcasting on the top of the hierarchy among other media
and did not accept the argument of the authorities that viable alternative to this form
of broadcasting was available.
ͺ. Conclusion
On the basis of the cases dealt with in the study, it is possible to raise a question
whether the judgments dealing with space communication do pursue any specific
model, which makes them different from others. It appears that some specifics can be
found in the fact that – at least in the cases connected with licensing of broadcasting
and Article 10 of the Convention – there is a natural, narrow connection of this human
rights area with the legal framework of the ITU, especially with the Radio Regulations.
These require that the administrations of Member States guarantee that all stations,
whatever their purpose, are established and operated in such a manner as not to cause
harmful interference to the radio services or communications of other Members, as
well as contain further detailed obligations of the ITU Member States in the area of
space communication.
However, it has to be mentioned that here are numerous other decisions of the
Court, which do not mention space communication at all but – in the contrary –
do have an enormous significance for the legal framework of national and international
telecommunication order. For all, the series of Article 10 decisions dealing with
frequency management, such as the judgments Groppera, Lentia or Radio une have