The EU Trade Secrets Protection Directive Is Dangerous For Freedoms and Rights - TruePublica
The EU Trade Secrets Protection Directive Is Dangerous For Freedoms and Rights
An Open Letter to Heads of State and Government of the European Union
Last 14th of April 2016, the European
Parliament voted in favour of the draft directive on trade secrets
protection. This directive still needs to be approved next May 17 by the
Council of the EU, which represents you. We urge you to further amend
the text before approving it.
Drafted by the European Commission at the request, and with the
considerable help, of a few multinational companies, this text has
caused much concern and opposition among European citizens, trade unions
and NGOs. As a matter of fact, it is meant to protect companies against
the theft of trade secrets but has a potential scope which is too large
and threatens to enable lawsuits against people who are not criminals:
journalists, trade unionists or whistle-blowers publishing internal
information from a company, or employees using information acquired in a
previous job.
The exceptions and protections supposed to protect liberties which
were introduced or reinforced following our campaign are important and
must be defended, but remain insufficient for the whole text to be
balanced and fair. Moreover, their transposition will change depending
on Member States, and above all the text is structured in such a way
that it it will be down to individual judges to balance the protection
of fundamental freedoms and the protection of economic interests.
The very principle of having to balance such different things is not
acceptable. The burden of proof is reversed: companies will only need to
prove that they did not authorise the acquisition, use or publication
of the trade secret at stake, while the prosecuted persons will need to
demonstrate that they acted in a way that is covered by one of the
exceptions. The sheer prospect of litigation will intimidate potential
investigations and whistleblowers, not to mention the daily impact on
employees’ mobility and the possibility for the public to access public
interest information on the toxicity of products on the EU market (such
as medicines or pesticides).
The trial of Antoine Deltour, Raphaël Halet (the whistleblowers) and
Edouard Perrin (the journalist) in the Luxleaks scandal is the perfect
example of the threats posed by this directive. The prosecutor justified
requesting heavy fines for all and 18 months jail time for the
whistleblowers by referring to “the EU Trade Secrets directive widely
approved in the European Parliament two weeks ago”. Contrary to the
denials of the text’s supporters, this is already a real life example
that the trade secrets protection argument can be used to prosecute
journalists and whistleblowers.
We urge you to not approve this text as it is. We think it is
indispensable that the definition of trade secrets is narrowed and that
the illegality of the acquisition, use or publication of trade secrets
is restricted to cases of commercial, financial or competitive gain.
Exceptions and protections must also be further reinforced, and the
prescription time in particular must be shortened to the original
Commission proposal (2 years). In parallel, we urge you to push the
European Commission to introduce specific EU legislation on the
protection of whistleblowers.
Respectfully
