Source: Whistleblower protection in 2024-2025: a system that stands the test of reality | Defender of Rights
The French independent administrative authority Défenseur des droits published its 2024 – 2025 biennial report on whistleblowing protection in France.
Key Highlights:
The very significant increase in situations brought to the attention of the Defender of Rights has allowed the institution to draw a more accurate portrait of the whistleblower. A committed actor in the service of the general interest, the whistleblower intervenes in many areas – health, the medico-social sector, the environment, public probity – and takes on multiple faces of daily life (hospital practitioner, police officer, farmer, etc.).
While these complaints reflect the need for whistleblower protection, the massive increase in requests to external reporting authorities – more than 10,000 reports in 2025 compared to 2,000 in 2023 – testifies to the vitality of the system for collecting and processing reports put in place and its mobilization by stakeholders.
However, despite the commitment of external authorities to respond to the increase in requests, this system raises major organizational weaknesses and challenges. Only about twenty of these authorities account for almost all the referrals, which makes it increasingly difficult to absorb this influx, due to a lack of sufficient resources to process applications efficiently.