EU parliament has adopted new rules on the protection of trade secrets, shortly after passing those on data protection, reported by Ars earlier today.

A European Parliament press release explains: "The rules will introduce an EU-wide definition of trade secrets and oblige member states to ensure that victims of the misuse of trade secrets will be able to defend their rights in court and seek compensation. The agreed text also lays down rules on the protection of confidential information during litigation." According to the agreed rules, "trade secret" means information which is "secret, has commercial value because it is secret, and has been subject to reasonable steps to keep it secret."

A controversial issue is the impact the new trade secrets rules will have on whistleblowers and journalists: "MEPs stressed the need to ensure that the legislation does not curb media freedom and pluralism or restrict the work of journalists, in particular with regard to their investigations and the protection of their sources."

However, the Pirate Party MEP, Julia Reda, believes the new rules will harm journalism, writing that they have "created major uncertainties about the role of whistleblowers and investigative journalists. All information, including information about malpractice, can be protected as a trade secret. As a result, the burden of proof that the public interest outweighs the business interest will now always lie with the whistleblower."

One area where whistleblowing is crucially important concerns drug safety. Health Action International (HAI), a non-governmental organisation dedicated to strengthening medicines policy to improve public health, said it was was "deeply disappointed with today’s adoption of the European Union Trade Secrets Directive."

"Under the Directive, researchers, journalists and whistle-blowers that expose illicit practices by the pharmaceutical industry, or reveal important medicine safety and efficacy information, will not be adequately protected under law," HAI wrote.

"Trade secret protection has long been a recurring argument by the pharmaceutical industry to justify data secrecy." Indeed, as HAI points out, "the trade secrets argument was used recently by the company sponsoring the clinical trial in France where one person died and others were injured." The journal Nature reported that the company involved refused to hand over information about the disastrous drug trial, "citing French laws that protect the release of trade secrets."

According to the transparency group Corporate Europe Observatory, a key group of MEPs from the centre-left Socialists & Democrats (S&D) party were persuaded to vote in favour of the new directive believing they had a firm commitment from the European Commission that new laws would be brought explicitly protecting whistleblowers.

But that's not how things worked out: "By voting for the trade secrets directive, the S&D lose everything: after the debate, and contrary to their demands, the Commission said last night that the legal provisions on this issue in article 5 of the [trade secrets] directive are strong enough. In other words, no need for a directive to protect whistleblowers."

Undeterred, Reda called on the European Commission "to present comprehensive European rules on whistleblower protection without delay," and noted that the Greens/EFA group in the European Parliament will offers its own draft directive for the protection of whistleblowers across Europe at a public event to take place in Brussels on May 4. The trade secrets directive may have passed, but the battle to protect whistleblowers and the flow of public safety data continues.