Roughly a year late, but here we are then: Belgium has finally transposed the Whistleblowers Directive into national law. The Act of 28 November 2022 on the protection of reporters of breaches of Union or national law discovered within a legal entity in the private sector sets out the rules for companies in the private sector (another on 8 December did the same for the public sector). The advantage of Belgium being one of the slowest pupils in the European class is that by now, you will already be quite familiar with the principles of the Whistleblowers Directive, in particular that legal entities with more than 50 employees have to set up an internal reporting channel and procedure for whistleblowing, and that the reports need to be handled by a person or service whose independence is guaranteed and for whom there are no conflicts of interest, etc.
The theoretical advantage of that prior knowledge is that this blog can focus on the topics where Belgium’s Act stand out from the herd, but as per usual, there is not an awful lot there to report. Belgium is not very often a trailblazer when it comes to transposing EU legislation, and this time is no exception. The Act of 28 November 2022 says what it needs to say and not much more.
Which matters can be reported on?
This is probably the only area where the Belgian legislator has shown some positive initiative. The Whistleblowers Directive included a list of areas of EU law that whistleblowers should be allowed to report on,...
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