Strasbourg court rules - finally - for A1+

The European Court of Human Rights this morning delivered its judgment in the second application by Armenian broadcasters A1+ and ruled that the denial of a licence on seven occasions did not meet requirements of lawfulness and therefore constituted a violation of the broadcaster's right to freedom of expression.

This is a very significant decision both as regards A1+ itself and as regards the wider consequences. The judgment refers to guidelines adopted by the Committee of Ministers and Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and states, point blank, that any process by which licences are awarded or denied simply on a points basis and no further reasons are given violates Article 10 of the ECHR. In this, it entrenches and expands the Court's 2007 similar judgment in Glas Nadezhda Eood v. Bulgaria. I haven't surveyed laws in other countries but my gut feeling is that this will have implications across Europe.

Note that A1+'s first application, no. 37780/02, was rejected ratione temporis at the tail-end of May 2008, and that we are still awaiting judgment in Noyan Tapan's not dissimilar application (37784/02 - declared partly admissible in 2004).