Július Pereszlényi – Servis TV-Video v. Slovakia
Pereszlényi (2021) is very instructive when it comes to the restrictive attitude of the ECtHRin relation to minority language rights, in this case, those of the Hungarian minority. Pursuant to Slovakia’s State Language Law, the language of the media is Slovak, except for minority broadcasts of the public media, and programs in the minority language must be subtitled or repeated in the State language. Július Pereszlényi, owner of the Párkány-based TV channel Servis TV-Video, was fined 165 euros by the National Broadcasting Council for failing to comply with the translation obligation. Mr Pereszlényi challenged the decision at the Supreme Court and then at the Constitutional Court, but both rejected his submission. He then turned to the Strasbourg court, claiming that the Slovak regulation violates his freedom of expression (ECHRArticle 10) and is discriminatorybecause Slovak programs do not have to be subtitled in another language. The ECtHR did not take a position on the case for six years, and then rejected the complaint for formal reasons. The essence of its reasoning was that the Constitutional Court of Slovakia did not have jurisdiction over the given issue (the constitutional complaint was not an effective remedy to be exhausted), therefore the applicant should have turned to the ECtHR immediately after the judgment of the Supreme Court, so his application was belated. According to experts, rejections on formal grounds usually take place within a year, and the Court in fact wanted to avoid the substantial assessment of the Slovak language law. Had the Strasbourg court been true to itself, it should have found a violation of the ECHR, since according to its settled case-law, freedom of expression protects the free choice of language in the private sphere (such as, for example, book distribution – Association Ekin v. France; press consumption – Albayrak v. Turkey, Yurtsever and Others v. Turkey, or campaign speeches – Sükran Aydin and Others v. Turkey).