“In compliance with ethical standards and contradictory debate, Le Soir contacted Maxime Degey on October 8 to submit several questions to him, as part of an article in preparation. The only response and after several reminders, Le Soir received, Thursday evening, an ‘injunction to suspend broadcasting’, decreed by the president of the court of first instance of Liège Which prevented Le Soir, as well as the entire Rossel group, from publishing the information in its possession. judge set the amount of the penalty at 50,000 euros, in the event of non-compliance with his sentence”, writes the daily. The judicial decision comes following a unilateral request of extreme urgency filed by Maxime Degey. The latter’s lawyer believes that “the publication, three days before the municipal elections, could have the consequence of directly impacting the result of said elections”. And that his client would suffer in particular “serious harm with regard to his rights to honor, his reputation and his private life”.
Press freedom in danger in Belgium? “The judgment in the Conner Rousseau case is shocking”
As a reminder, the decision relating to Conner Rousseau’s unilateral request to motivate his own approach was ultimately overturned. This decision was taken by the Ghent Court of Appeal on March 28, 2024, which recalled that preventive censorship was prohibited. The editorial staff of La Libre protests against these practices, which amount to pure and simple censorship. The vocation of a daily newspaper like La Libre or Le Soir is to publish reliable, cross-checked information. Any attempt to prevent this work in favor of the general interest amounts to a denial of democracy. It is worrying to see that these legal proceedings can succeed. We deeply deplore this and express all our support for the editorial staff of Le Soir.
