Congratulations to Hans-Martin Tillack, one of the earliest victims of Euro-authoritarianism, who has finally been vindicated after a three year court battle.  Daniel Hannan Report:  Tillack was, for several years, the EU correspondent of the German magazine, Stern. Before he arrived, the German press corps in

Tillack thought of himself as a pro-European, but could see that such deference was doing the EU no favours. In the absence of critical scrutiny, its bureaucracy had become self-serving, bloated and corrupt. Tillack began to expose some of the more egregious corruption cases, such as the story of how several EU officials had taken advantage of the poor accounting system to divert millions of euros into private accounts.The Euro-elites were furious. They expected such “anti-Europeanism” from British red-tops, but not from goody-goody Germans. When Tillack widened his investigation, and started to ask why the EU’s own anti-corruption unit had failed to act on tip-offs, they pounced. Belgian police raided his flat and seized his laptop, files and address books. He was held for ten hours without a lawyer, while his notebooks were confiscated, placing all his sources at risk. Even his private bank statements were ransacked.Shortly after he was released, I co-hosted a press conference for him to tell his story. Disgracefully, a number of MEPs turned up to heckle him, warning that he was allowing himself to be a tool of the anti-Europeans. Tillack smiled politely, and replied: “I am a pro-European. I want the EU to be closer to the citizen. But when their police were dragging me out of my bed, I felt they were getting too close to this citizen”.Last night, Tillack was awarded costs and damages by the European Court of Human Rights in his case against the Belgian state (just as well that he got in while there still is still a Belgian state to pay him, I suppose). But one question continues to nag. Having shown that they are prepared to impound records, seize files and confiscate bank statements, when are the EU authorities going to apply these techniques to the fraudsters, rather than to the people investigating fraud?  

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