Bumbeș v. Romania (Application no. 18079/15)

A selection of key paragraphs can be found below the judgement.

83.  The Court notes also that […] aside from the matter of the existence or absence of a prior notification, the conduct chosen by the applicant and the other participants to disseminate their message, namely handcuffing themselves to a car park barrier, taken on its own, could have been viewed as amounting to an unlawful act contrary to the public order and peace and to the norms of social coexistence, therefore giving rise to the possibility of the sanction being imposed on him.

84. In the light of the above, the Court is prepared to accept that the relevant domestic legal framework as applied in the applicant’s case to impose the sanction on him was formulated sufficiently clearly in order to fulfil the requirement of foreseeability under Article 10 § 2 of the Convention.

85. Therefore, the Court considers that the interference with the applicant’s right was “prescribed by law”.

86. The Court can accept that the sanction imposed on the applicant for organising or participating in the protest in question, for which no prior declaration had been made, could be aimed at the prevention of disorder and at the protection of the rights and freedoms of others (see, mutatis mutandis, Tatár and Fáber, cited above, § 32, and Novikova and Others v. Russia, nos. 25501/07and 4 others, § 147, 26 April 2016).