Whistleblowing
According to the Directive on protection of whistleblowers, Poland has until 17 December 2021 to introduce relevant statutory regulations. Although the legislative proposal has already been published, we can expect it to enter into force next year. Therefore, most probably the beginning of 2022 will be the time for many employers to implement obligations provided for in the Directive and the Act on protection of whistleblowers. One such obligation is the introduction of internal whistleblowing procedures. Under the proposal, failure to establish an internal whistleblowing and follow-up procedure is punishable by imprisonment of up to three years and other sanctions.
II. Can the function of DPO be combined with tasks related to Whistleblower reports?
The Office for Personal Data Protection (UODO) has published a position paper setting out the rationale for the possibility of combining the function of a Data Protection Officer (DPO) with tasks related to handling requests from whistleblowers.
In the UODO opinion, the question of whether there may be a conflict of interest in the case of a specific person and the tasks performed by that person should be assessed on a case-by-case basis. This means that the possibility of a conflict should be constantly monitored, as the reasons for the existence of such conflict may also arise at a later time, after the DPO has started performing his/her function.
In doing so, the controller should take into account criteria...
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