On December 2, 2014, the European Court of Human Rights (the Court) ruled in Urechean and Pavlicenco v. the Republic of Moldova that Moldova had violated Article 6 (right of access to court) of the European Convention on Human Rights when it did not allow the petitioners to sue then-President Voronin over defamatory remarks made about them on television.  According to the press release, the Moldovan courts considered President Vornonin immune to such lawsuits under the Constitution of Moldova’s provision that a President may “not be held liable for opinions which he expressed in the exercise of his mandate.”  The Court found that “a fair balance had not been struck between the competing interests involved, namely between the public’s interest in protecting the President’s freedom of speech in the exercise of his functions and the applicants’ interest in having access to a court to obtain a reasoned answer to their complaints.”