EU Member States reached a political agreement (general approach) on Friday morning, 25 January, at the meeting of the Permanent Representatives Committee (Coreper II), on the draft directive to protect whistleblowers, thus opening interinstitutional negotiations with the European Parliament.
The exchanges were brief. Poland and Ireland voted against the compromise reached by the Romanian Presidency of the Council of the EU - but for completely different reasons, Dublin already has strong national legislation in this area. The Czech Republic and Hungary also expressed their reluctance, but did not wish to have a blocking position on the legislative file.
Belgium, for its part, reportedly expressed its regret at maintaining a three-step reporting mechanism (internal reporting, then external reporting to a competent national authority, then finally to the public) and expressed its support for a two-step approach (internal or external, then to the public - see EUROPE 12178, 12176) in line with what the European Parliament wants (see EUROPE 12141). Portugal, Bulgaria and Ireland also apparently find themselves in the Brussels position.
The question of the reporting mechanism will undoubtedly be the main point of negotiation between Parliament and the Council. Parliament makes the two-stage mechanism one of the red lines of the forthcoming negotiations, the other being, of course, the question of the legal basis of the directive, the Council having significantly reduced the number of articles from 17 to 13, excluding in particular Article 207 of the TFEU, on international trade in firearms, where Parliament has, on the contrary, expanded the basis by adding Article 153 of the TFEU to cover working conditions.
The first interinstitutional meeting is scheduled for Tuesday 29 January. In all, 4 to 5 trilogues are to be planned, which could potentially bring the negotiations to mid-March. The idea is to be able to adopt the interinstitutional draft agreement by the Legal/Linguistic Service at the last plenary session of the European Parliament in April, and then to vote again on a corrigendum to the text cleaned by the Legal/Linguistic Service at the first plenary session of the new European Parliament. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)