Today, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) delivered its long-awaited judgement in the case of Halet v. Luxembourg. The applicant Raphaël Halet is one of the two whistleblowers in the LuxLeaks scandal, which has received worldwide attention. At great personal risk, he had helped to uncover secret agreements between major international corporations and the state of Luxembourg, which had deprived the public purse of taxpayers’ money in the multi-digit billions; for this he was convicted under criminal law in Luxembourg. In the subsequent proceedings before the ECtHR, Whistleblower Network was admitted as a so-called third-party intervener in order to be able to effectively defend Halet’s interests and those of whistleblowers in general.
Today, the ECtHR has finally ruled in favor of Raphaël Halet, exonerating him from criminal liability and ordering the State of Luxembourg to pay a total of €55,000! “In doing so, the court particularly emphasizes the considerable public interest in disclosing information about the tax avoidance practices of major international corporations,” explains Dr. Simon Gerdemann, who authored Whistleblower Network’s intervention brief. “The public’s interest in information prevails even and especially when the abuses uncovered are not formally illegal, the whistleblower is subject to special confidentiality obligations or he has to use methods relevant to criminal law to obtain the information.” The ruling is thus one of the greatest successes for whistleblowers and their right to disclosure in recent years, about which Whistleblower Network is particularly pleased as a supporter of Raphaël Halet.
By the decision of the ECtHR we see the German legislator in the obligation to adapt the German whistleblower protection law (“Hinweisgeberschutzgesetz”), which was recently been blocked in the Bundesrat by CDU/CSU, to the human rights situation determined by the ECtHR. This applies in particular to the inclusion of an additional right for public disclosures in cases where the interest of the democratic public is concerned, which we have long called for. This is warranted both by the human rights of individual courageous people like Raphaël Halet and the generally indispensable contribution that whistleblowers make to the success of a democratic civil society!
Further Information
- ECtHR press release on the judgment (14.02.2023).
- ECtHR judgment (14.02.2023)
- Video of the delivery of judgement (14.02.2023)
- WBN press release on the judgement in German
- WBN press release on the referral to the Grand Chamber of the ECtHR (07.01.2021)
- Whistleblower Protection Act (HinSchG) -according to Bundestag’s resolution (16.12.22)
- Bundestag’s review order on the HinSchG (16.12.22)
- WBN press release on the blocking of the HinSchG by the Bundesrat (10.01.2023)
- WBN press release on the decision of the Bundestag to pass the HinSchG (16.12.2022)
Kontakt
Whistleblower-Netzwerk e.V. (WBN)
Kosmas Zittel, managing director
zittel@whistleblower-net.de
Tel: +49 176 84915150