The Brussels office of Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC) is filing a lawsuit against Emir Kir, the mayor of Brussels’s Saint-Josse-ten-Noode district who last month ordered the shutdown of the National Conservatism Conference (NatCon), Yohann Rimokh, the lawyer representing the lawsuit, said. MCC is filing the lawsuit over an attempted infringement on the right to the freedom of speech, Rimokh told MTI.
Kir banned the conference on April 16, declaring „the far right is not welcome” in Etterbeek and Saint-Josse-ten-Noode, but a court overturned the closure of the event after its organisers challenged the mayor’s order.
„Unfortunately, this is not the first time that the freedom of speech has been in the crosshairs in Brussels or Belgium,” Rimokh said, adding that the attempted shutdown of NatCon had been the first time an administrative order had been used to cancel an event that was to be addressed by the prime minister of a European Union member state. He said it had also been the first time that Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo had been compelled to declare the district mayor’s actions unconstitutional.