Brussels, 29/06/2016 (Agence Europe) - The ruling in the so-called LuxLeaks affair delivered in public session by the District Court of Luxembourg on Wednesday 29 June has provoked indignation and controversy within sections of civil society and the European Parliament. Many are now calling for a directive protecting whistle-blowers to be adopted very quickly.
The 12th Chamber of the Court delivered sentence on two PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) employees: Antoine Deltour received a 12-month suspended prison sentence and a fine of €1,500 and Raphaël David Halet a suspended 9-month sentence and a fine of €1,000. The journalist from French daily Le Monde was, however, acquitted of all charges.
Unsurprisingly, the ruling triggered a huge outcry among journalists. The president of the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), Mogens Blicher Bjerregard, while welcoming the acquittal of the journalist, said he was deeply unhappy at the suspended prison sentences imposed on the two whistle-blowers. He called for a directive on whistle-blowers to be adopted as quickly as possible. The European Parliament, on the initiative of the Greens/EFA Group, is currently calling for just such a directive (see EUROPE 11557). Similarly, the president of the International Federation of Journalists, Philippe Leruth, has said that this ruling sends “the wrong signal” endangering relations between journalists and their sources. Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) also criticised the verdict, seeing in it the interests of big business prevailing over those of European citizens.
In the European Parliament, the S&D Group was the first to react. Pervenche Berès, the group's spokesperson on economic and monetary affairs, described the verdict as scandalous, taking the view that “something … is not right in our legal system if those who expose wrongdoing have to face justice while those responsible carry on their lives as if nothing has happened”. MEP Julia Reda (Greens/EFA, Germany) deemed the court's ruling “catastrophic and immoral”. At the time these lines are being written, the EPP Group had yet to comment.
On 16 June, the Greens/EFA Group launched a public consultation on its draft directive (see EUROPE 11576). (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)