License: CC0 Creative Commons
SOFIA (Bulgaria), July 18 (SeeNews) - Bulgaria may be taken to the EU Court of Justice should it fail to appropriately enshrine in its legislation recommended measures to protect whistleblowers who disclose breaches of EU law, the European Commission said.
Bulgaria is among 24 EU member states that have not acted after receiving formal notice from the Commission in January for failing to transpose the EU directive on the protection of persons who report breaches of Union law, the Commission said in a statement on Friday.
The deadline for transposing the recommendations into national law expired on December 17, 2021.
Bulgaria and 14 more member states that have yet to adopt transposition measures have two months to reply to the Commission's reasoned opinions, otherwise the EU executive body may decide to refer the countries to the EU Court of Justice as a next step in the infringement procedure, the Commission added.
In its 2022 Rule of Law report issued last week, the Commission cited the protection of whistleblowers as one of the areas of concern in Bulgaria, along with inadequate regulation of lobbying and the need for more sound mechanisms for the prosecution of high-level corruption cases.
The other 14 member states that have not yet transposed the directive on whistleblower protection are Czechia, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia and Spain.
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