If there are two things that Europe does well, it’s cheesy pop music… and SLAPPs. 

Across Europe, the rich and powerful are increasingly turning to abusive lawsuits – also known as SLAPPs (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) – as a means of silencing critical speech.

To mark SLAPPs’ meteoric rise in popularity, the Coalition Against SLAPPs in Europe (CASE)  launched the European SLAPP Contest, aiming to give some much deserved recognition to some of the continent’s worst legal bullies.

With all of the glitz and glamour of Eurovision – but with legal bullies instead of dance numbers – the inaugural European SLAPP Contest unveiled its list of winners  on Friday 21 May, the day before the Eurovision Song Contest, in a parody awards ceremony on the CASE website.

CASE is a diverse coalition of advocacy groups – including the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF), Reporters Without Borders, the European Federation of Journalists, Greenpeace EU and Transparency International – that aims to draw attention to the growing use of SLAPPs by powerful private interests to attack our democracies, ahead of the announcement of the European Commission’s anti-SLAPP measures this autumn.

Winners were selected from Poland and Croatia and the full list of nominees for each award is available here in the press pack. The awards were accepted on behalf of the winners by the targets of the SLAPPs profiled.