| There are multiple cases in Germany (where I live). I cannot find them all, but "Pimmelgate" is a famous one where one guy on twitter (that's what it was called at the time) told a local politician "Du bist ein Pimmel" (in English: "You're a dick") and the next day the police showed up at his apartment and searched it. The issue is the harassment. Most of these cases are baseless and get dropped once presented to the public prosecutor. But it puts unwarranted stress on people who just opened their mouth, regardless if I disagree with what they had said. If these cases were moved forward, they could end up in front of the European Court of Human Rights, where Germany and Austria are among the worst offenders[1] when it comes to the article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights[2], which grantees free speech in the EU. Usually these individual cases are used by neo-conservatives to criticize Europe and describe it as (their words) "a socialist hellhole." While this argument (= "there is no free speech in Europe") might be based on some truth, and while I agree that the free speech situation in most of Europe could be improved, I think it is grossly exaggerated. [1] https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/#{%22languageisocode%22:[%22ENG%2... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Convention_on_Human_R... |