In July, the European Commission initiated infringement proceedings against 14 EU Member States over their inaction or delays in transposing the so-called “Anti-SLAPP” Directive. These were Austria, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Spain.
“SLAPP” stands for “Strategic lawsuits against public participation”. The new Directive introduces EU-wide rules aimed at protecting journalists and civil society actors from manifestly unfounded or abusive civil proceedings with cross-border implications, including early dismissal tools and remedies for targets of SLAPPs. It was adopted in April 2024 and the transposition deadline was 7 May 2026.
Meanwhile, a number of Member States have initiated legislation. Austria for example just did so. Thereby Austria will also add an extra element, whereby it is foreseen in its implementing legislation that such frivolous lawsuits will also be able to be dismissed more quickly and easily if they are clearly intended to intimidate the public, Austrian Justice Minister Anna Sporrer has pointed out. She thereby also warned that the judiciary also needs sufficient resources to be equipped for the new tasks, including examining whether lawsuits are actually SLAPP cases.
That may not always be so clear-cut. Obviously, when wealthy individuals abuse the courts to go after financially weak counterparts, this can be described as “SLAPP”, but there are other cases, where NGOs claim they are being intimidated, whereas the opposite is actually the case.
One such case involves Greenpeace trying to use the EU’s new anti-SLAPP rules to go after US energy firm Energy Transfer. Last year, the green NGO filed a lawsuit at the District Court of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Shortly after, it was condemned to a massive 667 million U.S. dollar award in March 2025 in the United States, for its tactics to obstruct a new pipeline. A later US court decision also ruled in favor of Energy Transfer, although it reduced the damages award to be paid.
A specific concern here is that if Greenpeace gets its way in the Netherlands, this would effectively amount to “European courts to nullify verdicts of American juries and American judges”, according to Michael McKenna, a columnist for The Washington Times. He wrote the following about the case:
“Energy Transfer’s case against Greenpeace has already provided a stark reminder of the lengths to which some are willing to go. In that trial, the jury heard compelling evidence that Greenpeace dispatched professional protesters to the region, provided equipment and then helped train other protesters at the site. Greenpeace also paid for lockboxes that protesters could use to tie themselves to construction equipment.
In the months that followed, protesters engaged in acts of violence, vandalism and arson in their efforts to prevent the pipeline from being constructed. Greenpeace also disseminated — let’s be charitable and call it inaccurate — information about the company and its project, wrongly claiming that the pipeline would cross the sacred tribal lands of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. (…)
In its European lawsuit, Greenpeace does not offer any new evidence to dispute the findings of the North Dakota jury, which spent weeks hearing expert testimony and studying the evidence. Instead, it’s seeking a judiciary that is likely to have a more favorable view toward its brand of environmental extremism.”
McKenna thereby stresses about Greenpeace’s SLAPP – inspired lawsuit that “laws against strategic lawsuits against public participation were originally developed to protect free speech by shutting down frivolous lawsuits designed to silence people. In this case, the lawsuit was plainly not frivolous, given that a jury agreed with the plaintiff. Greenpeace’s ability to say what it thinks has not been impinged upon in any way. Indeed, it continues to regularly attack Energy Transfer in its press releases and blog posts.”
The concerns go beyond the legal debate. In a comment piece for Bloomberg Law, US lawyer Charles B. Meyer, also points out that “the resulting uncertainty” due to success for Greenpeace in the Netherlands “would send a chilling message to US companies operating in Europe and threaten the stability of major trade agreements—most notably the $750 billion US–EU energy pact through which Europe has committed to importing American liquefied natural gas. That deal is more than economic—it’s a strategic realignment designed to reduce Europe’s reliance on Russian energy and strengthen transatlantic ties.”
Greenpeace’s loss – decided by a jury – is in itself proof that the case isn’t frivolous. Greenpeace can’t exactly be described as a financially weak entity either, even if the NGO has claimed that it may be “forced to go bankrupt” as a result of this specific lawsuit. Then, surely, it wouldn’t be the first time the organization crosses certain limits. In 2023, its Dutch chapter openly threatened Dutch Rabobank on Twitter/X with “an ultimatum to (…) stop financing industrial agriculture and compensate for the damage that has been caused. If Rabobank does not commit within 15 days, there will be office closures across the country.”
As other commentators on the case have pointed out, “trespass, sabotage and threats are not free speech.” Greenpeace can therefore hardly be described as an innocent party here, or at least that was the concluding outcome from the US justice system.
By taking a dispute over events occurring in the United States to an overseas jurisdiction, effectively trying to shop around for justice, Greenpeace should not claim to be some kind of victim of judicial intimidation. Surely, there is a lot to improve in the United States, but when it comes to the rule of law, it is firmly among the leading countries in the world, according to for example “Our World In Data”, a non-profit affiliated with the University of Oxford. Earlier this year, a Dutch court allowed Greenpeace’s case to be pursued, while however allowing it to be based on the EU’s new anti-SLAPP directive, as this was not yet in force at the time of the events surrounding the case. Then surely by trying to instrumentalise new EU anti-SLAPP rules, Greenpeace has not been providing a service to the real victims of SLAPP. Perhaps it should not use the courts to conduct its political campaigning in the first place.
