On 27 July 2022 the Federal Cabinet passed the revised draft German Whistleblower Act (HinSchG)
In early June 2022, we reported about the delayed activities of the German Government to implement the EU directive 2019/1937 into national law https://www.rimonlaw.de/en/news/insights/article/quick-update-on-german-whistleblowing-1.html). Now – at last – the German Government has passed the Bill and after the summer break in early September, the Bill will be discussed in the German Parliament. The new Act should be in force by yearend 2022. The Bill (in German language): https://www.bmj.de/SharedDocs/Gesetzgebungsverfahren/Dokumente/RegE_Hinweisgeberschutz.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=2
It is no surprise that the Bill has raised critical opposition not only by the CDU/CSU party but also by the legal profession.
One of the key complaints about the earlier draft was the grey area around anonymous reporting. The new draft provides only minimal changes in this regard: there is still no obligation for companies to set up channels for anonymous reporting. Anonymous reports "shall" be processed, however only to the extent that priority processing of not-anonymous reports is not thereby endangered (see Sec. 16 and Sec. 27 HinSchG-E). Various whistleblowing reports have stressed the importance of making anonymous reporting channels available to whistleblowers. It is highly recommended that companies nevertheless set up safe internal...
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