It was some weeks after the Belgian Police had raided my home and office in Brussels on 19 March 2004.

I had to visit the Belgian Police investigators headquarters, as they wanted to decide which material they would return to me - and what they would like to keep, out of the 17 boxes with documents, basically my complete archives, they had carried away.

During this meeting, I had a conversation with the responsible police detective, a Walloon named Philippe Charlier. "Why do you go through all of this ordeal?" he asked me. "Why did you not simply reveal to us the name of your source in the EU Anti-Fraud Office [Olaf]?"

"Because, if I had done so my career as a journalist would have been finished," I explained. "My sources would have dried up. Nobody would have given me any confidential information any more."

"Why?", Charlier asked. "Okay, you would have burned one source. But that would not have hindered your access to all possible official channels of information."

"What?," I replied. "What kind of a journalism would that be where you could only base your reporting on official press releases and the words of those who govern us?" Mr Charlier was smiling again.

I was not sure whether he got my point. It is not always easy to explain why protection of sources is essential for the work of journalists.

Who controls the flow of information?

Some people still seem to believe that journalists are looking for undue privileges when they shield their sources and refuse to reveal the name of informers, even in the face of prosecutors or policemen.

The fight for the protection of sources is directly linked to a question fundamental to the survival of an open democracy: Who controls the flow of information?

Should governments, bureaucracies or big companies themselves decide what information is made public and what not? Or should there be a chance for citizens to receive information through other channels?

Free and democratic societies can only benefit from a free flow of information and therefore from the protection of the sources. Secrecy, on the other hand, is only beneficial to those in power – and who have something important to hide.

That is why those in power, be it in Washington, Brussels or Berlin will often do their utmost to find out who transmitted embarrassing information.

The case of Judith Miller

Who controls the flow of information? The case of the New York Times journalist Judith Miller touches on this question in two ways.

On 6 July, she was sent to prison because she refused to say who told her that Valery Plame was a covert CIA agent. Apparently people in the Bush administration had an interest in leaking this information in order to undermine the credibility of Plame’s husband, Joseph Wilson, an outspoken critic of the Iraq war.

He had revealed the fact that reports about Iraqi preparations for a nuclear bomb had been cooked. He had spread unwanted information and was therefore persona non grata for the US government.

Judith Miller certainly did the right thing when she refused to reveal her source. This is true although some attacked her for having acted like an "embedded journalist" by often making the case for an invasion of Iraq – and often basing her stories on anonymous sources in the Bush administration.

What is very particular about this case is the wide attention it received around the globe. There has been an outcry in the public and a wide debate, of which we Europeans can only be envious.

After all, in Europe in recent years we have seen attacks on journalists’ rights which were no less dangerous. Take the case of the Belgian journalist, Martine Ernst from the TV station RTBF, and of three of her colleagues. 160 Policemen were sent out on 23 June 1995 to search the offices of RTBF and the private flats of the journalists.

They had reported extensively about the inquiries into the 1991 murder of the Belgian politician André Cools – and about the links between his case and the bribes which Belgian political parties apparently received from two big weapon makers.

In October 1998, it was the turn of the Luxembourger journalist, Rob Roehmen, then editor of the "Lëtzebuerger Journal". His house and office were turned upside down by police after he disclosed a story that was embarrassing for the then interior minister of the country, Michel Wolter.

In both cases the reporters concerned had exposed facts that were embarrassing for the authorities. And these European cases have something else in common: they received much less public attention - even in Europe itself - than Judith Miller’s story.

Learning the lesson

On 19 March 2004, it was my turn to receive an early morning visit from six Belgian police men in plain clothes. To date, they still have nearly 1000 pages of documents, copies of my computer hard drives, address books and diary.

I have filed a lawsuit at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, against Belgium – and against the EU Commission, at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.

But that will not undo the damage. Just by going through my address book and my files the Belgian Police and Olaf can see with whom I was in contact.

But at least countries like Belgium and Luxembourg have learned their lesson. Both countries have introduced new press laws, which ban similar violations of the protection of sources.

Those who have not yet learned the lesson are the officials who run the EU institutions. Those mainly responsible for the raid in the Brussels office of my publication were not Belgians, but a circle of EU officials.

This story shows in a nutshell how strong the hostility to independent journalism still is in Brussels.

The EU institutions seem to be largely unused to critical coverage in the media. It is perhaps a logical consequence of the fact that there is no opposition in parliament and very little day-to-day pressure from the media.

Fraud and the EU

For my part, it all started in February and March 2002 when I published two articles based on internal Olaf documents.

They not only allowed me to reveal for the first time that there were several fraud investigations running into Eurostat – investigations which though had remained purely on paper until we revealed their existence.

The documents also suggested that the Commission was hardly showing the "zero tolerance" attitude towards fraud that President Romano Prodi had promised.

Then on 27 March 2002 Olaf spokesman Alessandro Butticé published a press release according to which "a journalist" might have paid an official. In an internal e-mail to all Olaf staff, Mr Butticé told a different story: There he admitted that there were only "rumours" to back up the bribery claim.

Unfortunately for Olaf and the Commission, my sources did not dry out. In the following two years I was able to sign quite a couple of additional stories about suspected Commission fraud and about Olaf’s striking failure to combat it.

Olaf boss Franz-Hermann Bruner decided to step up his activities – not against fraud, but against my reporting.

In February 2004, he had criminal complaints filed against me with the Belgian and German authorities. The Belgian Police came to my place and this was immediately followed by an Olaf statement that they had nothing to do with the search. It took them a whole weekend to admit that this was untrue.

In July 2004, President Romano Prodi and Commissioner Schreyer even decided to turn down a proposal from the President of the Court of First Instance, Bo Vesterdorf.

He had proposed that the Commission declare "that it will not address itself to the Belgian authorities in order to get access to all documents relating" to my case as long as it is pending before the EU Court.

Mr Vesterdorf’s proposal would have protected my sources from scrutiny by Commission officials. Prodi and Schreyer decided to act against this protection and to reject the compromise.

Subsequently the Court of First Instance and the European Court of Justice turned my requests for interim measures down. They not only allowed the Commission to seek access to my files but did not even mention the principle of protection of sources in their rulings.

Look at what happened to the intervention of the European Ombudsman Nikiforos Diamandouros. In May 2005 he issued a Special Report to the European Parliament that accused Olaf of having repeatedly presented misleading and wrong information about my case.

Mr Diamandouros had found evidence against two men: Olaf chief Bruner and his colleague Nick Ilett. What did the Parliament's leaders do? In a meeting on 7 July 2005, they decided to ditch a draft parliament report on that matter and cancelled a hearing which was already scheduled.

I’ll scratch your back...

It all seems to follow the same old principle: I’ll scratch your back, if you scratch mine. In fact, Mr Bruner had spared not only the Commission, but also the Parliament from embarrassing revelations about fraud in their own houses.

What Olaf had conducted in the Parliament’s administration were mere "fake investigations", experts of the Olaf Supervisory Committee wrote in an internal note in March 2003.

During a hearing in July 2005, almost all of the mainstream MEPs praised Olaf’s work. That was surprising given that the European Court of Auditors had confronted them with a damning report about Mr Bruner’s work.

The Commission continues to stand by Mr Bruner

Commissioner Siim Kallas has repeated several times, that Mr Bruner has „good chances" to be reappointed. Just before the summer break the Commission put his name on a shortlist of five candidates – the new director will be chosen in autumn.

Attacks on press freedom

Some people tend to think that the recent attacks on press freedom in the US are typical of the ruthlessness of the current Bush administration.

I tend to think that abuses always occur when governments or any other organisations are not sufficiently accountable to anyone.

That was certainly true for the US government after the terror attacks of 9/11 where it was deemed unpatriotic to question the president’s activities in the so-called war against terror.

There were few voices in the US congress that were critical of the invasion of Iraq. And there were only some journalists who dared to question the case for a war against Saddam Hussein. If someone such as Joseph Wilson spoke out, his reputation had to be undermined in order to restore the carefully assembled picture.

Unlike Washington, the Brussels institutions have little military firepower at their disposal.

Unlike President George Bush, Commission President José Manuel Barroso cannot launch a war against the most tiny middle east sheikdom.

But as in Washington after 9/11, there is a conformist tendency in Brussels from which many have suffered in past years: Whistleblowers like Paul van Buitenen or Marta Andreasen where both painted as mad by the Commission and also by many journalists.

When there is no opposition, there is also no one to question the official spin. Therefore, many journalists find it easier to simply spread the message the executive wants to have spread.

In the political culture of the EU capital there seems to be too many people – commissioners, officials, deputies, perhaps even judges – who have something to hide and who are therefore eager to make sure that information is not leaked to the press.

This is bad news for journalists in Brussels – but also for the credibility of the EU institutions.

The author is former Brussels editor of German weekly magazine Stern and now reports for the publication from Berlin

Door Hans-Martin Tillack
Bron: EUObserver