{"id":2225,"date":"2015-06-11T12:53:20","date_gmt":"2015-06-11T09:53:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/?p=2225"},"modified":"2015-06-11T12:53:20","modified_gmt":"2015-06-11T09:53:20","slug":"why-the-new-eu-directive-on-trade-secrets-protection-is-a-threat-to-media-freedom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/why-the-new-eu-directive-on-trade-secrets-protection-is-a-threat-to-media-freedom\/","title":{"rendered":"Why the new EU directive on trade secrets protection is a threat to media freedom?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Girl<\/a><\/strong>By Otmar Lahodynsky, President of AEJ<\/strong>
\nA new EU-directive is likely to threaten investigative journalism throughout Europe. Its main objective is the protection against disclosure and theft of secret business information like patents, innovative technologies or recipes.
\nBut NGOs and journalists\u2019 associations warn that this directive could endanger freedom of expression and information. The main reason for concern is an unreasonably broad definition of \u201etrade secrets\u201c. Companies could sue anyone who \u201eunlawfully acquires, uses or discloses\u201c a secret business information. Trade unions criticised that even informations about future mergers or redundancies could fall under the EU-directive. As employees would have to keep some business-informations secret they might face problems when starting a new job in another company. Thus the mobility of workers in the EU \u2013 considered as one of the four freedoms in the internal market \u2013 could be reduced.
\nSafeguards for freedom of expression and information are considered to be inadequate for journalists or whistleblowers as they would have to proof that a disclosure of a \u201etrade secret\u201c lies in the public interest. (See Article 4 of the directive). In addition, journalists would have to check first if an informer has acquired a certain information legally. Cosequently the research-work on informers could become more important than investigating the mere facts.
\nBoth restrictions would make revelations about some wrong behaviour of a company more difficult as is already now.
\nJudicial authorities of Luxemburg and France have recently started a trial against the whistleblower Antoine Deltour, a former clerk of Price Waterhouse Coopers, who unveiled that multinational corporations like Amazon, Fiat, Disney have paid only a small tax-rate in Luxemburg for their profits acquired in the whole EU. A French journalist, Eduard Perrin, who reported about these unfair tax-differences was recently indicted by the French justice.
\nWith the new directive on \u201etrade secrets\u201c in place investigative journalism could lead to a wave of accusations by companies against media-organizations. The OSCE\u2019s representative for media-freedom, Dunja Mijatovic, told the Austrian news magazine \u201eprofil\u201c that the EU-directive might have a \u201eserious impact on media freedom\u201c. \u201eSome of the provisions do not sufficiently prevent the introduction of excessive restrictions to freedom of expression and freedom of the media by the EU Member States\u201c, warns Mijatovic. \u201eMore particularly the text does not define the legitimate exercise of the right to freedom of expression and information and does not provide a clear notion of public interest in order to properly protect investigative journalism which involves the acquisition, use or disclosure of business information.\u201d
\nThe \u201eAssociation of European Journalists\u201c (AEJ) warned in an appeal to the top-leaders of EU-institutions that they should include more and precise safeguards in the new piece of legislation to prevent limits on freedom of information which is considered to be one of the basic values of the European Union.
\nThe \u201eEuropean Federation of Journalists\u201c (EFJ) also asked for changes in the directive.
\nUnder the proposed directive, whistleblowers can use undisclosed information to reveal misconduct or wrongdoing, but only if \u201cthe alleged acquisition, use or disclosure of the trade secret was necessary for such revelation and that the respondent acted in the public interest\u201d. Unfortunately, though, determining whether disclosure was necessary can often only be evaluated afterwards. In addition, it remains unclear whether many types of information (e.g., plans to terminate numerous employees) qualify as \u201cmisconduct\u201d or \u201cwrongdoing\u201d. This creates legal uncertainty for journalists, particularly those who specialise in economic investigations, warns the EFJ.
\nIn France, a national law (\u201eloi Macron\u201c), which followed the model of the EU-regulation on trade-secrets, caused public outcry and mass-protests at the end end of last year. Journalists and whistleblowers were threatened with jail-sentences up to three years and fines up to 300.000 Euros. Only after massive opposition by NGOs the French government scrapped the new regulation and apparently now waits for the EU-wide legislation.
\nThe French centre-right Member of European Parliament, Constance Le Grip, who leads the debate in the relevant legal committee, said, there were enough safeguards in the directive for journalists. She added that the directive \u201edoesn\u2019t go against civil liberties\u201c and it strikes a balance \u201ebetween the need to protect secrets and the need for knowledge and information to circulate.\u201c
\nBut it is also true, that a massive lobbying by companies took place in the relevant EU-institutions. Some enterprises whose products were copied illegaly urged EU-politicians to speed up the new directive.
\nIn contrast, NGO\u2019s warned that the new regulation will limit information to consumers. Trade secret protection may, for example, be invoked by companies to hide information on chemicals in plastics, clothing, cleaning products and other items that can cause severe damage to the environment and human health.
\nInformation about food safety might be withheld by some companies, or the relevant EU-authorities like the \u201eEuropean food safety Agency\u201c (EFSA) will have limited access to internal studies regarded as trade secrets under the new EU-law.
\nAlthough the new directive will have to be accompanied by provisions in national penal law, there are remedies foreseen in the directive: All the economic costs suffered by the company who was alegedly stolen a trade secret could be demanded as a compensation (see Article 11 of directive). This could be a potentially high sum for an individual or a media company.
\nThe directive was adopted by the EU-Council of ministers last year. Now the European Parliament deals with it and will vote on it this summer. It then will come back to the scrutiny of the Council of ministers- maybe the last chance to defend attacks on the freedom of journalism in Europe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Safeguards for freedom of expression and information are considered to be inadequate for journalists or whistleblowers as they would have to proof that a disclosure of a \u201etrade secret\u201c lies in the public interest. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13045,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[960,972,965],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-analyses","category-latest-news","category-media-freedom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}