Čedomir Backović was fined 100,000 Serbian dinars, around €910 at the time, after sarcastically referring to a court as comprised of “legal geniuses and legal giants” before describing its ruling as a “supreme nonsense”.

The Serbian proceedings on which he was commenting concerned his status as a city councillor in Sombor.

In October 2008, the Sombor District Court held that the terms of office of Sombor city councillors, including Mr Backović, had ended. However, this was overturned in September 2011 by the Constitutional Court of Serbia, which said it had breached the councillors’ rights.

The original judgment was formally amended in November 2011 by the Novi Sad Administrative Court.

Mr Backović, representing himself and some other councillors, sought enforcement of that new judgment in the form of a ruling confirming that they were still city councillors. He was at first unsuccessful and then appealed.

In his submissions, Mr Backović criticised “a kind of ‘pen-pushing’ restrictive ‘interpretation’ of the Enforcement Procedure Act” and called the enforcement court judges “legal geniuses and legal giants”.

He continued that “the finding of [the Administrative Court] is supreme nonsense, which simply is not worth any further comment. Whether it was written out of malice… or owing to a lack of knowledge, such a decision and its reasoning are incompatible with the actions of a professional judiciary in a state characterised by the rule of law that Serbia professes to be”.

As a result of these statements, Mr Backović was fined 100,000 Serbian dinars (€910) by the first-instance judge, who considered the content to have been aimed at insulting the court. His fine was later reduced to 50,000 Serbian dinars (€455).

After an unsuccessful constitutional appeal, Mr Backović launched proceedings before the European Court of Human Rights in June 2017, arguing that his submissions had not been insulting and that the fine had violated his rights under Article 10 ECHR (freedom of expression).

In this week’s Chamber judgment, the court held by a majority of 5-2 that there had been no violation of Mr Backović’s rights.

The court agreed that the fine had been an interference with Mr Backović’s freedom of expression, which was not disputed by the parties, but found that it had been in accordance with the law, had pursued a legitimate aim to which it had been proportionate, and had been “necessary in a democratic society”.

It observed that “the impugned decision was delivered in a single-judge procedure… and that the applicant’s remarks therefore had a personal aspect, that is they could be construed as being directed solely at the judge sitting in his case”.

It also noted that “while the decision to fine the applicant was indeed made by the same judge who had felt personally offended by the applicant’s remarks, there was an effective judicial review of the decision imposing the fine on him for contempt of court”.

Judges Hüseynov and Pavli disagreed with the majority in a joint dissenting opinion.

“In our view, the applicant’s comments, while strongly worded and at times sarcastic, did not cross the boundaries of permissible criticism for a lawyer acting in defence of the legal interests of his clients,” they said.