The 9th of March 2022 in Romania, did not only bring the first day outside the state of alert, but also developments in relation to the highly anticipated and closely monitored process of locally implementing the Whistleblower Protection Directive (WPD). The Romanian Government approved a draft law to transpose the WPD into local law.
NB: as the WPD implementation deadline has been defaulted by several EU Member States (including Romania), the EU Commission prompted compliance via letters of formal notice. This typically gives EU Member States 2 months to rectify so we expect Romania to be making efforts to swiftly turn this draft into law.
Next steps and possible timeline
Government approval is not sufficient for entry into force, but an important step to move the process further. After the draft law is approved by the Government, it will be submitted to Parliament for debate and final approval. The possible timeline for parliamentary debate is still uncertain. Considering the current social and political context, it is hard to tell if this will be considered a priority therefore mandating an emergency procedure. Nevertheless, as Romania missed the deadline and the draft law has a planned entry into force date on 31 March 2022, we expect further developments in the upcoming period (maybe not strictly adhering to this optimistic deadline, but soon).
Two draft laws on the same topic
On 24 November 2021, a (different) draft law on the implementation of the WPD was also...
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