EU Whistleblowing Rules to Change in Favor of Whistleblowers

Alja Poler De Zwart authored an article for the Journal of Investment Compliance covering the implications of the European Union’s new Whistleblowing Directive, which requires the Member States to create rules for organizations with more than 50 workers and mandates such organizations to implement whistleblowing hotlines for reporting a broad range of EU law violations.

“Considering that the minimum standards are already set by the Whistleblowing Directive, organizations should not wait until the Member States’ implementing laws are adopted,” Alja wrote. “Organizations can and should start taking initial steps to prepare for the new rules as soon as possible.”

She added that “organizations without whistleblowing hotlines should start their compliance projects sooner rather than later” as setting up the process from scratch “is usually not as simple as it looks, and it often starts with due diligence and engagement of a third-party hotline provider that can facilitate website and phone line reporting channels.” For organizations that already have hotlines in place, the process will be “a little easier to handle” and will “basically entail reviewing their existing hotlines and adjusting the relevant internal processes to what the Whistleblowing Directive requires.”

Read the full article.

This article was first published in the Journal of Investment Compliance, Vol. 21, No. 1, pp. 55-61.