ENGELS v. RUSSIA JUDGMENT In the case of Engels v. Russia, The European Court of Human Rights (Third Section), sitting as a Chamber composed of: Paul Lemmens, President, Georgios A. Serghides, Helen Keller, Dmitry Dedov, María Elósegui, Gilberto Felici, Erik Wennerström, judges, and Milan Blaško, Section Registrar, Having regard to: the application (no. 61919/16) against the Russian Federation lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) by a German national, Mr Grégory Engels (“the applicant”), on 11 October 2016; the decision to give notice to the Russian Government (“the Government”) of the complaints relating to the right to impart information and the right to an effective domestic remedy, and to declare the remainder of the application inadmissible; the observations submitted by the respondent Government and the observations in reply submitted by the applicant; the decision by the German Government not to exercise their right to intervene in the proceedings under Article 36 § 1 of the Convention; the comments submitted by third-party interveners who were granted leave to intervene by the President of the Section; Having deliberated in private on 26 May 2020, Delivers the following judgment, which was adopted on that date: INTRODUCTION The case concerns a decision by the Russian courts that information about unfiltered-browsing technologies available from the applicant’s website constituted prohibited content. THE FACTS 1. The applicant was born in 1976 and lives in Offenbach, Germany. He was represented by Mr S. Darbinyan, a lawyer practising in Moscow. 2. The Government were represented initially by Mr A. Fedorov, head of the office of the Representative of the Russian Federation to the European Court of Human Rights, and then by Mr M. Galperin, the Representative. 3. The facts of the case, as submitted by the parties, may be summarised as follows. 4. The applicant is a Russian-born German politician and activist working to support freedom of expression on the Internet. In 2012, he founded, together with local Russian activists, the RosKomSvoboda website (rublacklist.net) dedicated to news, information, analysis and research relating to freedom of expression online, 1