The European Court of Justice said people running free, donation-funded websites can qualify as “operators” under the EU’s Russia sanctions, even if they are not traditional broadcasters.

With its judgement, the EU Court of Justice ruled that the bloc’s RT (formerly Russia Today) is banned also from non-commercial operators, closing a potential loophole and increasing the effectiveness of EU sanctions.

Here is the judgement by the Court (pdf)

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Sharing videos from Russia’s state TV can land even a donation-funded blogger under EU sanctions, Europe’s top court ruled Thursday.

The European Court of Justice said a German court may treat three people accused of reposting videos from Russia Today Germany on the website Traugott Ickeroth as “operators” under the EU’s Russia sanctions rules, even though the website is freely accessible and not run by a traditional broadcaster.

German prosecutors accuse the trio — known only as R, N and K — of posting Russia Today Germany videos four times in 2023 through the website’s “Live-Ticker” blog. Under German law, violating the EU broadcasting ban can carry prison terms of three months to five years. Court records say R and N received more than 60,000 euros (roughly $68,400) in donations between April 2022 and August 2023.

The EU suspended broadcasts by Russia Today and Sputnik days after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, saying the Kremlin-controlled outlets were central to a disinformation campaign supporting the war. Since then, the bloc has expanded sanctions to thousands of Russian officials, oligarchs, banks, companies and other targets, making them one of its main tools for squeezing Moscow.

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The judges said the law does not limit the ban to commercial broadcasters. Instead, an “operator” simply means the person responsible for making prohibited content available to the public. “Applied to the field of communication and the broadcasting of media and digital content, that term refers to any natural or legal person directly or indirectly responsible for making available or transmitting that content to the public.”

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Jed Odermatt, a reader in international law at The City Law School, City St George’s, University of London, said: “By finding that profit motives are irrelevant to determining who is an ‘operator,’ the court confirms that these sanctions also apply to individuals running websites that disseminate prohibited content, closing what would otherwise have been an exploitable loophole.”

Luigi Lonardo, associate professor of European law at the Luxembourg Centre for European Law at the University of Luxembourg and adjunct faculty at Sciences Po’s Paris School of International Affairs, said the judgment shows why the court was willing to read the sanctions broadly. “This judgment is about the reach of EU censorship,” he said. “It is good news for the effectiveness of EU sanctions.”

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With the EU law question now settled, the case returns to the Saarbrücken Regional Court, where judges will decide whether the three defendants committed a crime under Germany’s sanctions law.

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