Pieter Omtzigt (EPP, Netherlands), general rapporteur of the European Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on the protection of whistleblowers, strongly criticised the reform of the Maltese whistleblower protection law.
In a statement released on Monday, it notes that “last Friday’s deadline for the transposition of the EU directive on improving whistleblower projection would have been a great opportunity to improve the legal protections for whistleblowers in Malta”, a country marked by the “brutal murder of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia”. He points to several serious flaws in the national law as amended: the lack of independence and conflict of interest safeguards for the new public and private sector whistleblower units, barriers to access to the organisation’s leadership that will prevent information from getting into the “right hands”, and a loophole in the definitions that places a heavy burden of proof on the whistleblower.
He also notes “with regret” the haste with which this legislation was adopted, “without any meaningful consultation” and without providing for regular monitoring of its impact.
Link to the statement: https://bit.ly/3mgHMLC (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)