How to comply with the EU Whistleblowing Directive

Despite its passage nearly four years ago, the EU’s whistleblower directive has yet to be adopted by many European Union member nations. The EU Commission has even recently taken eight EU member states to the European Court of Justice for not having implemented the directive yet. Despite this, many companies – and their compliance teams – have worked to revise their whistleblower policies or implement fresh ones in accordance with the EU’s guidance.

Especially organizations operating within the EU and having 50 or more employees (or are closing in on this important mark), are probably covered by the requirements of the EU whistleblower directive and need to implement a whistleblower function: Organization having over 250 employees already must meet the requirements of the directive as soon as possible and those having 50-250 employees must meet the deadline for compliance on 17 December 2023.

Since the EU law is not based on a regulation but on a directive, it’s important to note that requirements may vary from country to country. Therefore, Daniel Vaknineprovides in an article recently published a refresher course on what companies need to know about the whistleblowing directive and summarizes the most common practices among EU countries implementing their own legislation.

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