Few questions in European law are as tangled as deciding which national court can hear a claim when reputational harm spreads across borders. On 18 June 2026 the Court of Justice tried to bring order to that mess, ruling in Case C-232/25 (Idzinski) on jurisdiction for breaches of personality rights caused by a television series broadcast in several Member States and streamed online.
The facts read like a modern media parable. A person depicted, however loosely, in a dramatized series found the programme airing on traditional broadcasters in multiple countries and, simultaneously, available to anyone with an internet connection. Where, then, could that person sue? In one country, in each, or everywhere at once? The answer matters enormously, because forcing a claimant to chase a broadcaster through a dozen jurisdictions is its own form of injustice, while letting them pick any friendly forum invites abuse.
The Court leaned on its long-running framework for online torts, refining rather than discarding the so-called mosaic principle. Under that approach, a claimant can sue in each Member State where the content was accessible, but only for the damage suffered in that particular territory. For the full extent of the harm, the claimant must go either to the defendant’s home court or to the place where their centre of interests sits, typically their habitual residence or professional base. The ruling clarifies how that logic applies when the same material reaches the public through two very different channels at once: scheduled television and on-demand streaming.
What makes the judgment significant is its attempt to keep the rules coherent as distribution technology blurs old categories. A broadcast was once a discrete event in a fixed place. Streaming dissolves that, scattering a single work across every screen in the Union the moment it is uploaded. The Court declined to let that technical reality hand claimants an unlimited menu of courtrooms, insisting instead that jurisdiction track genuine connection rather than mere accessibility.
The reasoning carries a quiet message for an era of cross-border media. Personality rights, the dignity, privacy and reputation of individuals, remain firmly protected, but the venue for enforcing them is disciplined by predictability. Defendants need to know where they can be hauled into court; claimants need a forum that reflects where they actually live their lives. Balancing those interests is the unglamorous work that keeps the single market for media from descending into forum-shopping chaos.
For broadcasters, streaming platforms and production houses, the takeaway is practical. Legal exposure does not evaporate because content is digital, but neither does it multiply without limit. The centre-of-interests test gives both sides a fixed point to plan around. For ordinary citizens who find themselves portrayed, fairly or not, in transnational programming, the judgment offers a clearer route to redress without demanding they fund litigation in every country a signal happens to reach. It is a measured answer to a genuinely hard problem, and a reminder that fundamental rights need workable procedures, not just lofty declarations, to mean anything at all.
