Legalising the spying on journalists: Press freedom in the era of the People’s Republic of the European Union

“What do fundamental rights say about the press and the right to information? In the Belgian Constitution, Article 25 provides in particular that ‘The press is free; censorship can never be introduced; …’. It is difficult to consider that a journalist could remain free and would not be subject to self-censorship once the State had the ‘legal’ capacity to intrude, and unfairly so, into his professional conversations with his sources. Since the concept of a threat to State interests rests only on arbitrarily defined elements of suspicion, it is hard to see how censorship could never be introduced.”

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“In this respect, we can welcome the excellent wording of Art. 11 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (EU), which, it should be remembered, has the force of a treaty and, in the opinion of most judges, constitutional force. This article links together several naturally intertwined notions, such as freedom of expression and freedom of information, which together naturally give rise to freedom of the press. It provides that ‘Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers’. The crucial element being precisely theabsence of interference by public authorities in the exchange of information between the press and citizens.

This same article also provides that ‘the freedom and pluralism of the media shall be respected’. As the notion of freedom is diametrically opposed to that of electronic surveillance by the State, it is difficult to find any justification for this deviant political behaviour, which amounts to delinquency within the meaning of Belgian criminal law, in particular Art. 151, which deals with arbitrary infringements of rights and freedoms committed by public officials and holders of public authority. The Institutions, which are conspicuously failing in their public service missions, seem to be turning away from the essence of their mandate to concentrate on authoritarian excesses that harm the general interest and run counter to the will of the population.”

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“It is through this type of irresponsible projects and decisions, contrary to our common values, which have become more and more frequent in recent years, that the European Institutions themselves generate anti-European feeling. The institutions become self-generators of the effects they denounce as causes. An obvious form of denial of reality. It is not populism that emerges ex nihilo; it is the institutions that lose popular support by building nothing concrete for citizens, by giving rise to scandals of maladministration and corruption, and finally by turning away from the pursuit of the general interest of the population. This loss of public credibility is the dangerous prelude to the end of the European Institutions.

Hoping that the attempted political suicide can be stopped in time. It is now imperative to mobilise journalists, human rights activists, politicians still concerned with the fundamentals of democracy, associations, but also the population, in order to block these serious excesses, which are incompatible with our legal and democratic order.”

Frédéric Baldan

Read the full article here:
Légaliser l’espionnage des journalistes : la liberté de la presse à l’ère de la République Populaire de l’Union Européenne - L-Post

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