Title	CASE OF SZUROVECZ v. HUNGARY (Application no. 15428/16)
Publisher	Council of Europe: European Court of Human Rights
Publication Date	8 October 2019
Country	Hungary
Topics	Freedom of expression
Citation / Document Symbol	ECLI:CE:ECHR:2019:1008JUD001542816
Cite as	CASE OF SZUROVECZ v. HUNGARY (Application no. 15428/16), ECLI:CE:ECHR:2019:1008JUD001542816, Council of Europe: European Court of Human Rights, 8 October 2019, available at: https://www.refworld.org/cases,ECHR,5da07f1d4.html [accessed 18 May 2023]
Comments	The case concerned media access to reception facilities for asylum-seekers. The applicant in the case, a journalist for an Internet news portal, complained about the authorities’ refusal of his request to carry out interviews and take photographs at the Debrecen Reception Centre, thus preventing him from reporting on the living conditions there. The Court stressed that research work was an essential part of press freedom and had to be protected. It was not convinced that restricting the applicant’s ability to carry out such research work, which had prevented him from reporting first-hand on a matter of considerable public interest, namely the refugee crisis in Hungary, had been sufficiently justified. In particular, the authorities had only given summary reasons, namely possible problems for the safety and private lives of asylum-seekers, for their refusal, without any real weighing up of the interests at stake.
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