Introduction
The law of 28 November 2022 on the protection of whistleblowers of breaches of Union or national law established within a legal entity in the private sector (the Law), has been published on 15 December 2022. The Law transposes Directive (EU) 2019/1937 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 October 2019 on the protection of persons who report breaches of Union law into Belgian law (the Directive). The Law enters into force two months after publication in the Belgian Official Gazette (i.e., on 15 February 2022), noting that for certain legal entities, a number of provisions may be implemented later.
The Law does not prejudice the application of existing whistleblowing frameworks, namely the provisions of the law of 2 August 2002 (as amended by the law of 31 July 2017) that concern the reporting of actual or suspected infringements to the financial laws and regulations of which the compliance is supervised by the FSMA and the law of 18 September 2017 providing options to blow the whistle on breaches of the anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing provisions and on suspicious client transactions. The precise interplay between the Law and these frameworks however remains to be assessed.
Finally, the material scope of the Law is broader than the one of the Directive, as it also protects persons reporting issues that concern tax and social fraud.
The Law provides for different thresholds at the level of legal...
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