This article was originally published on 30 October 2023 on 'Thomson Reuters Regulatory Intelligence' by Thomson Reuters. Thomson Reuters.

We recently published the results of the Freshfields whistleblowing survey 2023, which gathered the views of over 2,500 individuals across five jurisdictions (the US, the UK, Hong Kong, France and Germany) and a range of industries. The survey gauges attitudes towards whistleblowing and how these attitudes may have changed since our last survey in 2020.

In recent blog posts, amongst other topics, we have examined the impact of remote and hybrid working on speak-up culture (see here), as well as US and Hong Kong trends emerging from the survey results (see here and here). This blog post looks at whether the 2019 EU Whistleblower Protection Directive (the directive) and its local implementing laws have had any impact on the responses to our survey in France and Germany overall and in the Financial Services (FS) sector.

The directive, which sets out minimum standards for the protection of whistleblowers, requires companies that meet certain employee thresholds to, amongst other things:

• establish internal reporting channels for speak-up reports;
• implement internal whistleblowing procedures;
• comply with a timeline for following up on speak-up reports; and
• handle reports with confidentiality.

Limited impact of the directive so far

The 2023 Freshfields survey suggests that the directive has had a limited impact on whistleblowing so far,...

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