For the last several weeks I have been working with NAVEX to research whistleblower protection laws across Europe. Meanwhile, several benchmarking surveys about corporate compliance programs have arrived lately, with some intriguing findings about the effectiveness of whistleblower hotlines.
Put both of those things together, and corporate compliance officers have a lot to ponder as you keep working to roll out effective whistleblower hotlines at the global level.
Let’s start with those whistleblower protection laws in Europe. The European Union has seen a wave of legislative activity in the last 12 months or so, as EU member states transposed the EU Whistleblower Protection Directive into their own national law. Much of that action came from member states that had not transposed the Directive by the end of 2021, per the Directive’s original deadline; then European Commission bureaucrats began court proceedings to force the issue.
Well, consider it forced. We now have whistleblower protection laws across (most of) the land.
The good news for global corporations is that these laws are substantively the same across Europe. (That was the whole point of the EU Whistleblower Protection Directive, after all.) For example, every EU nation’s whistleblower protection law requires the following:
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