In July, Roger Hallam – co-founder of Just Stop Oil – was sentenced to five years in prison for conspiracy to intentionally cause a public nuisance after discussing plans to block the UK’s M25 motorway over Zoom. This is reportedly the longest sentence ever handed down for a peaceful protest in the UK. Hallam, whose four co-defendants also received significant sentences, has launched an appeal against what he deems a ‘massively excessive’ jail term. 

His sentence overtakes the previous record set only a year before, when Just Stop Oil supporter Morgan Trowland was given three years for public nuisance after he climbed the cables of the Queen Elizabeth II bridge in England, hanging suspended in a hammock atop the 137-metre structure for almost two days. He served 14 months of the sentence.

These record-breaking sentences are one way in which peaceful protesters – particularly those concerned with the climate crisis – are facing a challenging environment in many parts of Europe. In recent years, a raft of legislation has passed through the continent’s legislatures, creating new offences, expanding police powers and broadening key definitions to widen the net by which protesters might be caught. 

Italy passed the so-called ‘eco-vandals’ law in January, which imposes tougher penalties on those who damage monuments and cultural sites. In doing so it targets another favourite protest method used by climate activists, who in recent years have splattered prominent art works and structures, including Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, with paint, soup and dye.

Other jurisdictions are attempting to prevent peaceful protests even before they begin. In the German state of Bavaria, activists from the group Last Generation (Letzte Generation) have been held in preventative custody under the Bavarian Police Act, a piece of legislation that was controversially amended in 2018. 

Public rhetoric has also become increasingly hostile to protesters. A report by Amnesty International identified a trend of stigmatisation by authorities aimed at delegitimising protesters and protests, with demonstrators variously described as ‘terrorists’, ‘extremists’ or ‘foreign agents’. 

Commentators have expressed concern that the vilification of protesters will have an impact on how the population perceives them and their cause. Authorities in Germany, Italy and Spain have been emboldened to target climate activists under terrorism-related provisions and legislation intended to tackle organised crime, with little public resistance.

The issue of ‘disruption’ is often used as justification for taking a hardline approach to peaceful protests. But citing inconvenience isn’t a valid excuse for the persecution of protesters, says Linda Lakhdhir, Legal Director at climate and human rights monitoring organisation Climate Rights International (CRI). ‘Protests are fundamentally disruptive, that is the nature of protests,’ she says, but ‘the fact that there is disruption doesn’t mean it’s not a protected right.’

A crackdown on the right to protest by countries positioning themselves on the international stage as exemplars of the rule of law has broader implications for the preservation of human rights around the globe, says Lakhdhir. European countries risk losing their moral authority to positively influence developments in more oppressive regions and, worse still, may potentially give the green light for more aggressive methods of tackling dissent to be used. ‘I’m absolutely certain it will be cited back as a justification for further restrictions on protests in more repressive countries’, says Lakhdhir. 

In the UK, civil liberties organisation Liberty had some success in May in its challenge of the government’s Public Order Act 1986 (Serious Disruption to the Life of the Community) Regulations 2023, which significantly reduced the threshold at which the police could impose conditions on protests. Under the new rules, anything causing ‘more than minor disruption’ could have conditions imposed.  

The UK’s House of Lords rejected the new powers when they were introduced by primary legislation. However, the Secretary of State then made the regulations via the ‘Henry VIII’ powers in the original Act, which allowed for amendment ‘for the purposes of making provision about the meaning of […] serious disruption to the life of the community’.

In its judgment in May, the High Court ruled that the government had acted unlawfully in conducting an unfair consultation process and on the grounds that in the context of the regulations, the expression ‘more than minor’ isn’t within the scope of the word ‘serious’.

Despite this, the High Court suspended the quashing of the regulations pending an appeal. ‘The police are using these powers to impose conditions on protest and potentially to arrest protesters’, says Katy Watts, a lawyer at Liberty, ‘so those criminal cases are continuing to go through the justice system under laws which the High Court has found to be unlawful.’ 

A spokesperson for the Home Office told Global Insight that ‘the right to protest is fundamental to our democracy, and all public order legislation must balance this right.’ However, the Home Office ‘disagrees with the Court’s ruling in this case’, hence its appeal. The appeal is scheduled to be held later in 2024. 

Whatever the outcome of the case, Lakhdhir says that it’s not just about overturning restrictive laws. Fundamentally, governments must change their attitudes towards protest. ‘They need to understand that protest is a fundamental part of a democracy and that […] protecting the right to protest and enabling protesters to protest safely is part of their obligations under international treaties they have signed.’