On 7 August 2024, Lisbon’s Administrative Court ruled that the Lisbon City Council must pay a fine of €1,027,500 for revealing the personal data of three organizers of an anti-Kremlin demonstration in 2021, Euroactiv reports.
In June 2021, the city authorities admitted to handing over the personal data of three activists to the Russian embassy in Lisbon. These activists were organizing a protest outside the embassy in support of the late political dissident Alexei Navalny, who was arrested in January 2021 upon his return to Russia.
Under Portuguese law, organizers of such protests must provide their personal data to the city council, which then shares the information with the police and “competent authorities”. The city council claimed it interpreted this to mean the data should also be sent to the Russian embassy.
The three activists, two of whom held dual Russian-Portuguese citizenship, argued that the Lisbon City Council had jeopardized their safety and that of their family members in Russia by releasing their personal details.
In a statement, Lisbon’s Mayor Carlos Moedas said the city council regrets “this heavy legacy left by the previous Socialist executive and its very significant impact”.
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