PARIS (Reuters) – The European Court of Human Rights ruled that a conviction for incitement to racial hatred and discrimination against far-right French presidential candidate and polemicist Eric Zemmour was not a violation of his freedom of expression.
Zemmour, who won 7% in the first round of France’s April election, had brought the case to challenge a 2018 decision by a French court on grounds of freedom of expression under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The court ruling on Tuesday stated that there was no violation of Article 10 as “the interference with the applicant’s right to freedom of expression had been necessary in a democratic society to protect the rights of others which had been at stake in the case”.
The 2018 ruling by the Paris Appeals court had deemed remarks Zemmour had made during a TV programme in 2016 to be discriminatory against Muslims.
He had said on air that France was undergoing “an invasion, a colonisation” and that French Muslims must choose between France and Islam.
The ECHR ruling stated that Zemmour had the right to participate in the debate on Islam in society, but that his remarks were aggressive and discriminatory and targeted Muslims themselves.
His request to appeal the conviction, for which he was handed a 3,000 euro ($3,187.80) fine, was rejected by the highest court in France, the Court of Cassation, in 2019.
($1 = 0.9411 euros)
(Reporting by Layli Foroudi; Editing by Tomasz Janowski)
