In the case of Ludes and Others v. France the Court held that there had been no violation of the freedom of expression.

The case concerned the criminal conviction of the applicants, environmental activists, and their sentencing to suspended fines, for theft committed as a joint enterprise, after they had taken down the official portrait of the French President in several town halls and refused to return it. They had been seeking to draw attention to the State’s inaction with regard to its COP21 climate-summit commitments and the fight against climate change more generally.

The Court noted the care taken by the domestic courts to assess the proportionality of the interference in issue from the standpoint of Article 10 of the Convention, taking into account the context of the activities and the applicants’ motives. In particular, it considered that the domestic courts had validly based their decisions to convict the applicants on the fact that the portraits had not been returned, after pointing out that taking them down alone would have been sufficient to convey the applicants’ message.

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