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EU Whistleblowing Directive

  • 11th November 2020

EU Whistleblowing Directive

Safecall and Beyond Governance

Safecall and Beyond Governance team up to co author a white paper explaining what the new EU Whistleblowing Directive is and how it affects businesses within the EU and UK.

On October 7th 2019 the Council of the EU formally adopted a set of principles intended to set a minimum standard of protection for whistleblowers across all EU member states.


At a high-level, member states must;

  • Make organisations, within their jurisdiction with over 50 employees, establish effective internal reporting channels; *
  • Create or appoint a competent authority as an escalation route, should an organisation fail to manage a whistleblowing complaint;
  • Provide a wide range of legal and financial protections for whistleblowers; and
  • Invalidate non-disclosure type agreements (NDAs) in relation to whistleblowing cases.

Member states have until December 2021 to adopt the new rules into their national legislation. The precise implementation of these rules will vary between member states. 10 of the 27 member states, and indeed the UK, already have some whistleblower protections within their national legislation, and some member states may choose to further enhance protections for whistleblowers.

Simon Rowse, Director, Safecall

“The EU Whistleblowing Directive marks an important point in the evolution of global Whistleblowing legislation and the continued recognition of the value of effective whistleblowing programmes to individuals, businesses and the economy. Unifying standards will help firms to put effective arrangements in place to prevent, discover and resolve employee misconduct and make workplaces safer, both physically and mentally”.

Erika Percival, CEO, Beyond Governance

“Good whistleblowing procedures have always been a key internal control mechanism to ensure that wrong behaviours can be raised and addressed. The EU Whistleblowing Directive extends the breadth and depth of the requirements capturing more organisations. For the Directive to really affect behaviour change and support the identification of wrongdoing, organisations need to embrace the changes and put in place the right mechanisms to protect themselves and their workforce”.

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