The General Court of the European Union ruled on 25 September 2018 that MEPs expenses can remain secret. The highest court confirmed the European Parliament’s refusal to give access to documents related to MEPs’ expenses to a group of journalists, claiming that this would undermine MEPs’ personal privacy. The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) condemns this decision and renews its call to improve transparency and access to information in the European Union. The request was forwarded to the European Parliament (EP) in 2015 by a group of 29 journalists, who wanted to access information on the MEPs’ spending records. According to Euractiv,…

The European Commission published on 23 April 2018 a proposal for a directive on the protection of persons reporting on breaches of Union law. The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) welcomed this initiative, while warning that the legislative text doesn’t fully meet the criteria to establish a robust protection against retaliation for whistleblowers at the European level. In a brochure published in September, Quentin Van Enis, a legal expert specialised in media, lecturer at the University of Namur and member of the Belgian press council (CDJ), analysed for the EFJ the draft directive from the journalists’ perspective. The author highlighted the…