This is a well-known process used by companies to try to silence the press: SLAPP procedures. The principle: launch legal actions to intimidate or dissuade journalists and rights defenders from investigating or revealing sensitive information.
January 5, 2017, while journalist Nicolas Vescovacci is in the middle of writing an investigative book on businessman Vincent Bolloré (Vincent Almightyco-written with Jean-Pierre Canet, published by JC Lattès) a bailiff knocks on his door to give him a letter.
“I open this envelope and I see on the third page an amount: 700,000 euros plus 50,000 euros. I say to myself what is this about? Vivendi accused me of having jeopardized the smooth running of the company through emails and text messages that I had sent simply to do my job, that is to say “contradictory” in an investigation, and he demanded 750,000 euros in damages from me”
In this case, the Vivendi group will ultimately be condemned for “abusive procedure”.
The businessman and his companies will file two other defamation actions, these against the authors of the book. Before withdrawing a few weeks before the hearing.
Also readVincent Bolloré and his media empire, a springboard for the far right in France?
“In the end, Vivendi or Vincent Bolloré brought three proceedings against me. Three procedures means almost 6 to 7 years of legal pressure on your shoulders and financial costs of several thousand euros. This is a gag procedure. It is concrete and precise intimidation of a journalist, a newspaper or a publishing house. It’s to scare others so that they don’t get involved in the investigation, and Vincent Bolloré is a fan of gag procedures.”
Contacted, Vincent Bolloré’s lawyer did not respond to this assertion.
The fact remains that this type of procedure is increasing, observes Nicolas Vescovacci, also a member of the collective of journalists “Informing is not a crime”: “We cannot imagine the number of proceedings that are brought against journalists who, for example, in Brittany, investigate the French agri-food system. All this to limit the release of information which is of general interest.”
It is precisely to limit the use of these abusive legal procedures that a European directive was adopted in March 2024.
Didier Leick, lawyer at the Paris Bar specializing in press law: “There is now a European directive which aims to provide a certain number of protection measures for the most abusive procedures. For example: that the one who initiated the procedure bears the legal costs and since he is ordered to cover the costs of the procedure. So that the latter, who is trying to “gag” to use the expression, himself has to manage a little risk.”
Member States of the European Union still need to transpose this directive into their national law. They have until 2026 to do it…
Some lawyers are already pointing out the limits of this text since it currently only concerns legal actions launched before civil courts. And not those initiated in criminal proceedings, which nevertheless represent the overwhelming majority of these SLAPP procedures.