The EU’s highest court has fined Germany and four other countries for failing to create laws to boost protection for those who expose wrongdoing.
The European Union’s highest court on Thursday handed Germany a fine of €34 million ($36.7 million) for failing to adequately protect whistleblowers.
The case at the Luxembourg-based European Court of Justice (ECJ) stemmed from a March 2023 complaint by the European Commission alleging that Germany did not implement EU law on time.
Four other countries were also ordered to pay for their failure to create laws that protect whistleblowers — €2.3 million for the Czech Republic and €1.75 million for Hungary. Luxembourg and Estonia were slapped with fines of up to €500,000.
What is the EU’s whistleblower directive?
The EU’s whistleblower directive is designed to give protection to people in the public and private sectors to disclose wrongdoing.
This generally means whistleblowers are shielded from reprisals such as dismissal, demotion, pay reduction and even litigation.
“By reporting breaches of Union law that are harmful to the public interest, such persons act as ‘whistleblowers’ and thereby play a key role in exposing and preventing such breaches and in safeguarding the welfare of society,” the EU law reads.
The law was passed in December 2019 after several scandals such as Dieselgate, LuxLeaks, Panama Papers and Facebook’s data misuse came to light because of whistleblowers.
The bloc’s 27 member states had until the end of 2021 to incorporate the EU directive into national law. Germany’s Whistleblower Protection Act did not enter into force until July 2023.
