The EU co-legislators are meeting again and perhaps for the last time at the negotiating table to try to find a way out from under the horizontal directive to protect whistleblowers, on Monday evening, March 4.
Two major political obstacles remain impassable at the moment: - the legal basis of the legislative text, with the European Parliament wishing to extend it to Article 153 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU, while the Council wishes to reduce the number of articles; - and, above all, the three-stage prioritisation of the reporting mechanism (within the organisation, then to the competent external authorities and, finally, to the media), which the Council does not seem to want to abandon in favour of the Parliament proposal to remove any hierarchy between internal and external reporting.
Behind this harsh position, which undermines the negotiations, there would be a group of Member States - France, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and Italy - which constitutes a blocking minority.
German proposal. On the Council's side, Germany would consider a proposal, namely an opt-in/opt-out system: the Directive no longer contains any reference to any hierarchy between internal and external alerts, but only to a public disclosure system.
Thus, it would be left to the discretion of the Member States to set up a hierarchy of alerts or not. This solution would give some observers reason to fear that the protection of whistleblowers on European territory will be fragmented, which is precisely what this directive seeks to counter.
On the Parliament side, an opinion from the legal services is expected on the reporting system. During the last technical meetings, many points were finalised, in particular on the scope of exemptions when national security is involved, on the technical aspects of internal and external alerts, or even public.
Justice ministers will be invited to give their position on the whistleblowers directive at the Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) Council on Friday, 8 March.
250,000 signatures against the Council's position
On the same day, a group of civil society organisations presented Virginie Rozière MEP (S&D, France) with two petitions with 250,000 signatures, calling in particular on the Council and the Commission to support Parliament's position (see EUROPE 12202).
When questioned by EUROPE, Ms Rozière, Parliament's rapporteur on the legislative dossier, castigated those Member States that strongly oppose Parliament's proposal. According to her, while the directive is supposed to protect future whistleblowers, these countries want to make it a text that would discourage anyone from playing the role of whistleblower in the future, because of a lack of sufficient protection. (Pascal Hansens, Damien Genicot - intern)