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On 29 September 2024, the national parliamentary election in Austria will shape the course of the implementation of a ruling by the Constitutional Court (the VfGH), which declared certain provisions governing Austria's public service media (PSM) organisation, the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF), unconstitutional. The ruling issued on 5 October 2023 pursuant to Article 140 of the Federal Constitutional Law (B-VG), following a public oral hearing and a request for judicial review, will take effect on 31 March 2025, with the previous provisions not being reinstated. The legislature...

On 12 June 2024, the National Council of Austria adopted a federal law amending the Data Protection Act. The new rules, which entered into force on 1 July 2024, aim to reorganise and differentiate the so-called media privilege in data protection. The revision became necessary following a decision by the Constitutional Court (VfGH), which ruled that a previous ruling – the blanket exemption for the media on the basis of Article 85 of the GDPR – was unconstitutional. According to the VfGH, data processing for journalistic purposes should not be exempted from the provisions of...

On 12 February 2024, Austrian legislators took the last remaining step to remove a historic and blatant obstacle to freedom of information. From September 2025, Austria will have a constitutionally guaranteed right to information for citizens vis-à-vis the state, together with the necessary rules for its enforcement. Both the National Council and the Federal Council of the Austrian Parliament gave the green light for a corresponding amendment to the Constitution and an accompanying Freedom of Information Act with the required two-thirds majority. The new legal regime is to end the decades-long...

The EU's AI Act will have massive implications for Austria. Still, the government decided not to wait an additional two years up until EU law enters into force but to respond to the challenges of artificial intelligence (AI) at the national level and prepare well ahead. Even before the EU AI Act comes into force, Austria will implement a labelling requirement for AI systems for transparency purposes. A survey on the use of AI applications in the federal ministries has already been carried out for this purpose. Thus, in December 2023, an amendment to the KommAustria Act and the Telecommunications...

A judgment of 5 September 2023 of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) dealt with a complaint under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) about the refusal to hold the publisher of an Internet news portal liable for hate speech in users’ comments against a female journalist. With reference to its earlier Grand Chamber case law in the context of freedom of expression under Article 10 ECHR, as in Delfi AS v. Estonia (IRIS 2015-7/1) and more recently Sanchez v. France (IRIS 2023-6:1/15), the ECtHR reiterated that when comments take the form of hate speech and direct...