Background
Z.R. is a Polish national and former soldier of a clandestine WWII Polish military unit (unit X), as well as a former prisoner of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. Ś. is a Polish association of former unit X members whose stated purposes include defending that unit’s dignity, reputation, and historical memory. U. and Z. are German co-producers of a television series set against the backdrop of the Second World War. The series, first broadcast in Germany in 2013 and subsequently in several EU member states including Poland, was also made available online. Z.R. and Ś. alleged the series depicted unit X soldiers as anti-Semitic, nationalistic, and complicit in the Holocaust, thereby breaching their personality rights — including rights to dignity, national identity, and an accurate historical account.
In November 2013, the applicants sued U. and Z. before the Regional Court in Kraków, Poland, seeking apologies on the relevant television channels and on the internet, as well as PLN 25,000 (approximately €5,750) in non-material damages for Z.R. The German defendants challenged Polish jurisdiction, arguing that only German courts — courts of the defendants’ domicile — had jurisdiction. Polish courts at first and second instance upheld their own jurisdiction and, on the merits, granted partial relief. The Court of Appeal, however, dismissed Z.R.’s individual claims entirely, finding no sufficient link between him and the allegedly defamatory scenes. All parties appealed to Poland’s Supreme Court (Sąd Najwyższy), which stayed the proceedings and referred questions to the CJEU on the scope of Article 5(3) of Regulation (EC) No 44/2001 (the Brussels I Regulation).
The Supreme Court asked, in essence, whether the “centre of interests” connecting factor — which permits a plaintiff to sue for the entirety of alleged personality-rights damage in the courts of the member state where she or he is most closely connected — applies to damage caused by a television broadcast (not only internet publication), and whether indirect identification of a group, rather than a named individual, is sufficient to trigger that full-damage jurisdiction under the internet-specific case law.
The Court’s Holding
The Court held that the “centre of interests” rule established in eDate Advertising (C-509/09 and C-161/10) — under which a person may sue for all alleged damage in the courts of the member state where her or his centre of interests is located — does not extend to personality-rights breaches caused by television broadcasts. Television dissemination is regionalised and geographically bounded by the reach of the broadcast signal; it lacks the defining characteristic of internet publication, which is instant, worldwide, and practically uncontrollable ubiquity. Accordingly, for TV-broadcast content, courts of each member state in which the content was broadcast and where the victim claims reputational injury have jurisdiction, but each such court may award compensation only for the damage sustained within its own territory. The simultaneous broadcast of the same content on television and online does not alter this analysis; plaintiffs retain the option of suing for all damage before the courts of the defendant’s domicile or the place of the causal event.
On the internet-specific question, the Court reaffirmed that jurisdiction to hear a claim for all internet-related damage in the court of the plaintiff’s centre of interests requires that the online content contain “objective and verifiable elements” making it possible to identify the claimant — directly or indirectly — as an individual (following Mittelbayerischer Verlag, C-800/19). The Court held that this standard is not met simply because the content unequivocally identifies a limited, closed group of which the natural person is a member. Mere group membership does not permit identification of any particular member with the certainty required for jurisdictional predictability; the various members of such a group may have centres of interests in different member states, so a defendant could not foresee in which court it might be sued. Z.R., who cannot be individually identified from the fictional series, therefore cannot invoke centre-of-interests jurisdiction to claim for all damage caused by the internet broadcast.
However, the Court drew a distinct conclusion for the association Ś. Where a legal person’s principal purpose is to defend the interests of a limited, closed group, and where that group itself is directly and unequivocally identified by the online content, the court of that legal person’s centre of interests does have jurisdiction to hear an action for the entirety of the damage alleged to have been caused by the internet broadcast. Because the series specifically targeted unit X — a directly identifiable group — it was predictable to the producers that Ś., whose mission is precisely to defend that unit, could sue for all its internet-related harm before Polish courts.
Key Takeaways
- The eDate Advertising “centre of interests” jurisdiction for full-damage claims applies exclusively to internet-disseminated content; it does not extend to television broadcasts, which remain subject to the territorially limited, publication-state-by-publication-state rule from Shevill.
- Simultaneous TV and internet dissemination of the same content does not automatically merge the jurisdictional regimes; the ubiquity rationale that justifies the internet exception is absent for the TV component.
- For online content, “indirect identification” of a natural person requires that the content permit identification of that specific individual with certainty through attributes distinguishing her or him from all others — mere membership in a defamed group is not sufficient.
- A legal person whose core mission is to defend a named, closed group enjoys full-damage “centre of interests” jurisdiction over internet-related claims when that group is itself directly and objectively identifiable in the offending content.
- Defendants retain meaningful predictability: they can identify potential forums by asking whether the content directly names a legal person’s represented group, not merely whether some member of a broad group might claim injury in an unknown location.
Why It Matters
This is the first CJEU ruling to expressly confine the eDate Advertising centre-of-interests rule to the internet medium and to decline its extension to television, notwithstanding the growing technological convergence between broadcast and online channels. The judgment gives content producers and broadcasters clearer exposure maps: territorial-only liability for traditional TV distribution, with full-damage centre-of-interests exposure reserved for online publication. It also resolves a contested question left open since Mittelbayerischer Verlag by confirming that group defamation — without individual identification — is jurisdictionally insufficient for a natural person’s full-damage claim, even where the group is small and closed.
For practitioners advising on cross-border media disputes in the EU, the ruling reinforces forum strategy: plaintiffs injured solely by television broadcasts must sue state-by-state (or go to the defendant’s domicile for full relief), while associations representing directly identified groups retain a more convenient single-forum option for internet damage. The decision also signals that technological convergence arguments — such as the increasing use of geo-blocking to limit internet content territorially — will not easily displace established jurisdictional categories absent a fundamental change in the legal framework.