The European Commission (EC) has won a legal battle to gain access to an investigative journalist’s notes and potentially reveal his sources, in a ruling that could have ramifications for press freedom across Europe.
Hans Martin Tillack, the former Brussels correspondent of German magazine Stern, Bertelsmann’s weekly news and current affairs magazine, this week failed in a legal bid to stop the commission looking at his notes, with a European court of justice ruling going against him.
The notes were seized by Belgian police last year, along with address books, copies of hard disks and e-mail records.
The court’s decision bodes badly for press freedom in Europe, according to the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ).
The EFJ secretary general, Aiden White, described the ruling against Tillack as ”a shocking denial of justice to journalists and their sources”.
Tillack now intends to take the Belgian police to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg for the return of his possessions.
Belgian police seized the material in raids on Tillack’s home and office in March last year, after he wrote a series of exposés about alleged corruption in the commission’s statistical office, Eurostat.
Tillack was then arrested by Belgian police on the grounds of allegations made by the EC’s anti-fraud office, Olaf, that he bribed officials for information, a claim the journalist strongly denies. He has not been charged with any offence.
The well-known Brussels reporter said he was interrogated for hours without being granted contact with anybody, and his treatment sparked worldwide condemnation from media and journalists’ organisations.
This week’s ruling dismisses Tillack’s argument that the commission should not be able to view his notes and could potentially open the way for the identification of the sources of his exposés.
”The commission makes unsubstantiated allegations against a reporter and then gets access to his confidential files, which potentially compromise anyone who has talked to him. It is a shocking denial of justice to journalists and their sources,” said White.
”These allegations already smack of intimidation of a reporter by bullying authority. It is unconscionable that the law allows the commission to get its hands on his confidential files when no charges have been laid and no allegations have been proved.”
The journalists’ body believes the police will clear Tillack of all the accusations against him, and that the commission should not be allowed to take advantage of the ongoing police investigation to ”go fishing for names of his contacts”.
But it said that recent changes to Belgian law, which enhance protection for journalists’ sources of information, will help avoid a similar case to Tillack’s in future.
”But that is of little comfort to Hans Martin Tillack, whose professional life remains under a cloud of uncertainty,” said White.
He said it is time the commission and the Belgian authorities clear Tillack and end ”this unsavoury affair”. — Guardian Unlimited Â