The ruling once again led to criticism of the procedure known as the unilateral petition, by which an applicant to a court can ask for measures to be taken without the opposing party being given the right to defend against or contest the claim. The procedure is used in cases where delay would mean irreparable harm to the applicant, and it has been used several times to prevent publication of articles or broadcast of contentious material.

In this case, the documentary concerned the family of a woman who holds extreme religious beliefs and included testimony from her husband and children filmed undercover with a secret camera. The woman claimed the footage, which she had not seen, was illegally obtained and breached her right to privacy. The judge agreed and ordered the programme not to be broadcast on pain on a fine of €100,000. VTM was given no opportunity to state its case.

The unilateral petition was invoked recently to force shops to withdraw the magazine Dag Allemaal, on pain of a fine of €1,000 per copy sold, after it published a photo of a woman without her permission. In August, TV Familie and Blik were pulled from shops after they published photos of a beauty contestant taken when she was a minor. And in October of 2007 Moulinsart, the owners of the rights to illustrator Hergé’s work, stopped the broadcast of a film on Tintin, on the basis of hidden camera footage.