In recent years, the phenomenon of powerful corporations and governments starting lawsuits to target journalists and human rights defenders has captured much societal attention, and the term ‘Strategic Lawsuits against Public Participation’ (‘SLAPPs’) has become commonplace in legal and political discourse. The emerging consensus that SLAPPs are lamentable is fuelled further by the easily digestible narrative presenting brave truth-tellers as deserving of protection against dragging, expensive lawsuits aimed at silencing them. ‘The synopsis of a bad and overly dramatic Netflix series’, is how Greenpeace’s attorneys described a recent SLAPP. However, in this case, the tables might turn. Following the adoption of the EU Anti-SLAPP Directive, the Amsterdam District Court (‘ADC’) in July 2025 first heard Greenpeace’s claims for damages resulting from a SLAPP. I argue that despite considerable legal obstacles, this case could represent a breakthrough in the fight against SLAPPs.
Setting the stage
American oil giant Energy Transfer (‘ET’) sued Greenpeace International (‘Greenpeace’) in 2017 over the latter’s support for the indigenous Sioux Tribe that protested construction plans for a pipeline in North Dakota, USA, which endangered the Tribe’s access to safe water. Although ET claimed otherwise, Greenpeace’s only proven involvement is co-signing a letter with about 500 other civil society organisations (‘CSOs’) urging financiers to freeze funding until the Sioux’s demands were met. After fiery clashes between protestors and ET’s hired security, the project was seemingly cancelled. However, then newly installed US President Trump, who received campaign donations from ET’s CEO, issued an executive order to resume construction. Still, ET sued Greenpeace and other signatories of the letter, and accused them, among other things, of ‘extremism’. After years of litigation before different courts, a North Dakota jury held Greenpeace liable in February 2025 for over $660 million. Greenpeace is appealing this judgment, but already suffered major legal costs that will not be reimbursed, regardless of the outcome of the appeal.
To recover its costs, Greenpeace is countersuing in the Netherlands, which ET in turn tries to block in US courts. Greenpeace’s claim comes in the wake of calls from the European Parliament, the Council of Europe, and the OECD to end the increasing threat of SLAPPs worldwide. Besides political statements, the EU also took concrete action by adopting the ‘Anti-SLAPP Directive’ 2024/1069 (‘the Directive’) as the first binding legal instrument against SLAPPs (see Eckes and Paiement on the main elements and significance of the Directive).
Greenpeace understandably tries to gain momentum for its lawsuit by presenting it as the new Directive’s first tour de force. However, it is not straightforward whether this claim withstands legal scrutiny. In the remainder of this post, I argue that this case is not suitable to evaluate the standard of protection that the Directive offers as of yet, but that the adoption of the Directive could still have a crucial influence on the outcome of Greenpeace v ET, making this case a potential model for future anti-SLAPP lawsuits in the EU.
The Directive’s Role
It would be legally unsound for Greenpeace to base its claims directly on the Directive. Directives are addressed to Member States and cannot be invoked against private parties like ET. The EU legislator consciously chose to use this instrument rather than a Regulation, which would have granted protection against private parties, in order to afford Member States discretion in implementing the safeguards and not encroach on existing divergences in the Member States’ national procedural law. Moreover, with the Directive’s implementation period running until May 2026 (Article 22), Member States are not yet obliged to guarantee the Directive’s protections, and courts do not yet have to interpret national rules consistently with the Directive (Case C-212/04, Adeneler, para 135). A proper test for the instrument, such as a lawsuit against a Member State for failing to grant the necessary protections to a victim, is therefore not yet possible.
While the Dutch government initiated legislation to implement two specific rules of the Directive, it claims most of the Directive is in line with pre-existing Dutch law. The choice not to adopt comprehensive implementing legislation was criticised by CSOs (Greenpeace even dared to co-sign another, this time not so controversial, letter to that effect). These CSOs argued that an explicit legal basis in national law would put anti-SLAPP protections beyond any doubt and thereby strengthen the preventative effect of the Directive.
In the absence of such clear legislation, the question of whether the ADC grants Greenpeace the protections it would enjoy if the Directive were implemented verbatim depends on pre-existing Dutch law and the ADC’s interpretation thereof. Although there exists no duty to interpret Dutch law in accordance with the rules of the Directive, the Directive’s normative force can still play a key role in guiding the ADC’s interpretation of the relevant norms of Dutch law. This will be illustrated by highlighting two interpretation questions the ADC is faced with in this case.
Jurisdiction
Arguably, the most challenging interpretation question concerns jurisdiction. Greenpeace argues that, since it is based in Amsterdam and its damages were paid from its Dutch bank account, the tort’s harm occurred in the Netherlands, granting jurisdiction to Dutch courts. This reasoning aligns with Article 17(1) of the Directive. However, as mentioned before, the Dutch government did not implement this provision, pointing instead to Article 6(e) of the Code of Civil Procedure (‘Rv’), which grants Dutch courts competence in tort cases ‘if the incident causing the damage occurred or could occur in The Netherlands’. Dutch courts interpret this rule using the CJEU’s interpretation of the similarly worded Article 7 of the Brussels Ibis Regulation 1215/2012 as a point of reference. The Dutch government, and in turn Greenpeace’s attorneys, asserted that the CJEU interprets Article 7 of the Brussels Ibis Regulation as allowing for jurisdiction when victims challenge a SLAPP abroad, and thus Article 6(e) Rv does too.
As Van Houtert noted (here and here), this argument seems difficult to reconcile with actual CJEU case law. In Universal Music, Löber and Vereniging van Effectenbezitters, the ECJ mentions the need for ‘other circumstances specific to the case’ than ‘purely financial damage’, suggesting Article 7 of the Brussels Ibis Regulation does not grant jurisdiction in tort disputes where the sole connecting factor is the location of the victim’s bank account. This explains how Article 17(1) of the Directive complements pre-existing EU law and was not an unnecessary repetition of previous EU legal instruments.
Since the Brussels Ibis Regulation leaves jurisdiction issues to national law if the defendant is domiciled outside of the EU (Article 6(1)), the ADC needs to apply Article 6(e) Rv. Although Dutch courts typically view the CJEU’s interpretation of Article 7 of the Brussels Ibis Regulation as instructive, they are not bound by it. And since there exists neither CJEU nor Dutch case law denying that the conditions inherent in SLAPP disputes justify a more generous reading of competence criteria, the question whether Article 6(e) Rv allows for jurisdiction in such disputes remains unsettled.
In light of the rationale underpinning Article 17(1) of the Directive, I would argue that the Dutch government’s assertion that in SLAPP cases, the tort ‘occurs’ at the victim’s domicile has merit. From the victim’s perspective, the harmful effects indeed materialise at home. SLAPPs can be started anywhere and often in places unforeseen by the victim. It would be unreasonable to ask victims to countersue wherever the SLAPP started, since that is likely extremely costly and difficult. Moreover, this would overlooks the fact that the place where a SLAPP is started is typically chosen because it offers strategic benefits to the claimant. North Dakota, for example, is one of the few US States without anti-SLAPP legislation. In line with the political and legal consensus favouring more lenient jurisdiction standards for anti-SLAPP suits, it would be sensible for the ADC to embrace a reading of Article 6(e) Rv that allows Greenpeace’s claims to be heard.
What About Successful SLAPPs?
Another important interpretation question concerns substantive law. Given the limited scope of this blogpost, I discuss only one criterion of the key Article 4(3) of the Directive, namely that for litigation to be considered ‘abusive’, the underlying claim must be ‘unfounded’. Since the North Dakota jury awarded even more damages than originally claimed, Greenpeace v ET raises the question of what to do when a powerful actor files an excessive claim, aimed at penalising public participation, but the court … grants it in full?
The requirement of a claim being ‘unfounded’ reflects an element of unseriousness inherent in SLAPPs. A literal reading would suggest that awarded claims cannot be abusive, since they apparently had merit. The deviation from the original Commission proposal’s wording of ‘partially unfounded’ further implies a purposefully narrowed-down criterion. On the other hand, recital 29 states that a claim ‘does not necessarily have to be completely unfounded’ to be abusive. Moreover, Article 16 orders Member States to have their courts refuse recognition and enforcement of third-country judgements whenever the related proceedings are manifestly unfounded or abusive under the law of that Member State. Leaving aside whether the EU legislator had US courts in mind or mainly included this provision to provide protection against other third countries with systematic rule of law deficiencies, this provision leaves little doubt that a claim being awarded by a foreign court cannot be decisive to set aside the Directive.
This conclusion does not only concern the Directive, but also the standard to determine liability under Dutch tort law. Greenpeace namely invoked the ‘unwritten standard of care’ of Article 6:162 of the Civil Code. As was done in the Urgenda and Shell rulings, this norm can be concretised and made justiciable by using relevant rules of international law, including soft law. Hence, the ADC will presumably apply the criteria of the Directive, since this is the leading legal instrument against SLAPPs, despite the Directive being in its implementing phase. Instead of submitting to the North Dakota jury, the ADC should thus assess whether under Dutch law this fact-pattern would be fertile ground for a multi-million-euro damages claim (quod non).
Conclusion
Greenpeace v ET is the first case of its kind, and its plot could take another fascinating turn when the ADC delivers its ruling. This blogpost highlights that the case is not straight-forward – it features a Directive still in its implementing phase, open-ended national law, and intercontinental turns of events. Still, the Directive’s normative force as the leading international legal instrument to combat the threat of SLAPPs can guide the ADC to interpretations of Dutch law that are mindful of the widely shared conviction that SLAPPs threaten democracies, and victims should have recourse to effective legal protection. As such, this case could inspire other anti-SLAPP lawsuits in the EU and become a breakthrough in the efforts to significantly reduce the threat of abusive litigation.
Jesse Peters works as a Policy Adviser for the Dutch Ministry of Finance. He previously worked as junior lecturer in International and European Law at the University of Amsterdam. Any views expressed in this post are his, and do not represent the official position of the Dutch government.
