The German journalist Hans-Martin Tillack’s court case against the European Commission has been going on for a while, now the European Court of First Instance rejected his application for interim measures: The court decided that „prima facie, the application for annulment of the forwarding to the national judicial authorities of information held by OLAF and the application for compensation in respect of damage allegedly suffered cannot be upheld“ (full decision).

As mentioned earlier, there was a controversial raid of Tillack’s office apparently instigated by the European Anti-Fraud Office OLAF. The latest court decision is only an interim decision that deals neither with the question of the raid nor with the allegations against Tillack — that he bribed an EU official to get documents. According to a Focus report, a Belgian civil court already decided in mid-September that the raid was legal.

Later on: I wrote this minutes before I saw Michael Froomkins’s posting The EU Needs a First Amendment citing an article by Telegraph’s Ambrose Evans-Pritchard. The newspaper article apparently mixes up preliminary and final judgment; in addition, the court doesn’t say „that the case was a strictly Belgian matter“ in its decision. But I strongly agree with Michael’s dislike of „a very broad attempt to seize all of a journalist´s notes“ and I really hope Belgium gets proper press freedom very soon.