The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has dismissed Agon Channel’s application against the Albanian government for violating its right to freedom of expression and right not to be discriminated.
The Strasbourg Court found that the company had not exhausted all domestic remedies, thus ruling that Agon’s application is inadmissible under the terms of the Convention for Human Rights.
A satellite-only TV channel, in 2013 Agon sought to acquire a nationwide digital broadcasting license which it could do only by participating in a contest organized by the Audio-visual Media Authority (AMA).
AMA, however, had invited only privately-owned operators with a previous license to participate in the contest, which—as a company created only in 2012—Agon did not possess.
In 2014, the company filed a complaint with AMA arguing that “that the ban on non-national broadcasters to participate in the beauty-contest procedure, despite having the technical capacities to provide for national coverage, was arbitrary and unfair.”
As its complaint to AMA went unheeded, Agon turned to the European Court of Human Rights, arguing that “its right to freedom of expression…and its right not to be discriminated…were violated because it was not invited to participate in the [procedure] and because it could not apply for allocation of a digital broadcasting licence.”
It also presented a further application in June 2016 after its assets were seized by the Albanian government and its shareholders were pursued criminally. The Court, however, found that these latter complaints were not filed properly.
The ECHR also ruled that Agon’s case before it is inadmissible as the company “has not lodged any complaint before the national courts.” The ECHR argued that the company could have addressed the Administrative Court given that this latter had already stayed AMA’s contest once and forced the agency to revise its regulation.
Concerning Agon’s arguments that it did not think it would be successful before the Albanian courts, the ECHR commented that “the existence of mere doubts as to the prospects of success of a particular remedy which is not obviously futile is not a valid reason for failing to exhaust them.”
The ECHR added that “the applicant company failed to take appropriate steps to enable the national courts to fulfil their fundamental role.”
It also concluded that it does not “discern any special reasons for dispensing the applicant company from the requirement to exhaust domestic remedies in accordance with the applicable rules and procedure of domestic law.”
Last year the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes ordered Albania to pay €110 million to Italian businessman Francesco Becchetti for the “politically motivated” government closure of his Agon television channel in 2015.
