Over lunch at the Justice and Home Affairs Council on Tuesday 28 March, EU justice ministers held what was described as a fruitful initial debate about the possibility of introducing ‘horizontal’ legislation to protect whistle-blowers. They were said to have discussed how to define "good faith" for whistle-blowers.
The talks were described by Maltese justice minister Owen Bonnici as "frank and open". He seemed to favour European legislation, highlighting the huge disparity in national rules for whistle-blowing and the fact that some member states have no legislation at all. Above all, the question of whether the European Commission should submit an initiative was answered in the affirmative by Bonnici, stressing the importance of the subject and saying that the Commission should be "big" on "big subjects", referring to the institutional mantra.
European Commissioner for Justice Věra Jourová went into more detail, saying that the definition of the "good faith" of whistle-blowers had been brought up by many ministers. Some argue that some whistle-blowers do not defend the public interest but want to get revenge, and protection was needed against such behaviour.
The commissioner said she was waiting until the end of the year to learn from the experience of France and the Netherlands, which recently introduced new ‘horizontal’ legislation in this connection. On the question of national examples, the commissioner said that the rules in Luxembourg and Romania were interesting. Both countries require civil servants to issue alerts, failing which they could themselves be found guilty of fraud and malpractice, she explained.
Finally, Jourová echoed the words of the justice minister of Luxembourg, who had warned that he would prefer the introduction of a "culture of transparency" rather than an "informing culture".
Unstructured debate. The Maltese Presidency wanted as open a discussion as possible and is reported therefore not to have issued any question to structure the debate, but rather simply an information memo on the history of the project. This was criticised by a diplomat for resulting in an unstructured debate.
Interestingly, EUROPE has been able to see the memo, which mentions a Eurobarometer survey of 2014 in which one in three citizens say that the lack of protection for whistle-blowers discourages people from coming forward to report fraud.
The European Commission opened a public consultation on the question that will run from March to 31 May (see EUROPE 11738). Jourová said the Commission would return to the issue in the second half of 2017. The question is still in the doldrums in the European Parliament because of a dispute between the S&D Group and the ALDE group on who should draft the own-initiative report (see EUROPE 11747). (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)