The Rising Cost of Environmental Dissent in Europe

• Across Europe, governments are increasingly using criminal law, surveillance, and legal harassment to suppress climate and environmental activism.
• A 2025 comparative study found that 17.2% of climate protests in the UK resulted in arrests, significantly higher than the 6.3% international average.
• International human rights bodies, including UN Special Rapporteurs, have issued guidelines urging states to protect civil disobedience and ensure sanctions against peaceful protesters are proportionate.

Recent Legal Trends

• In France, appellate courts upheld convictions against environmentalists involved in protests against water reservoirs.
• Turkish activist Esra Işık received a prison sentence for peaceful demonstrations against coal mining expansion.
• Australian authorities arrested 138 individuals during a direct action protest aimed at blocking a coal ship.

Judicial Shifts in Strasbourg

• The European Court on Human Rights (ECtHR) historically protected disruptive political expression, such as in cases involving Greenpeace and anti-coal activists in Poland.
• In the 2025 Ludes and Others v. France case, the ECtHR ruled against climate activists who removed presidential portraits, effectively narrowing the scope of protected political protest when it conflicts with property law.
• Dissenting judges warned that such rulings risk signaling that peaceful protest is vulnerable to criminalization when it challenges established rules.

Implications for Democracy

• States do not need to explicitly abolish the right to protest to weaken it; they can raise the "price" of dissent through arrests, fines, and protracted legal proceedings.
• The cumulative effect of these legal barriers may discourage future participation in public demonstrations and activism.