Source: prawo.pl
The new Minister of Family, Labour, and Social Policy, Agnieszka Dziemianowicz-Bąk, in Poland, has announced that the transposition of EU Directives – including the Directive on Whistleblower Protection will be a priority of the new coalition government, sworn into office in Poland in December 2023.
A new draft law on protecting persons reporting breaches of law was published on the Government Legislation Centre’s webpage on 12 January 2024.
The Bill is largely based on the draft proposal prepared by the previous government (the Law and Justice party). It does not contain amendments expected and advocated for by various stakeholders, including interested NGOs.
The Ministry wants to utilize urgent legislative procedures to progress the new bill, due to the expiration of the 17 December 2021 deadline for transposition of the Directive on whistleblowing, and the risk of financial penalties from the Court of Justice of the European Union for these delays. Using the separate legislative procedure will mean bypassing the public consultation stage.
The most significant changes proposed in the published bill include:
- Reassigning the Ombudsman as a whistleblowing authority (rather than the State Labour Inspectorate) who will be responsible for providing information and advice as well as receiving external reports and triaging them to forward to the public authority considered competent to take appropriate follow-up action.
- Removing a whistleblower’s requirement to reasonably believe that the information he is reporting relates to the public interest.
- Certification of a whistleblower’s status when making an external report will be issued by the public authority when requested, rather than being a mandatory obligation).
The new proposal does not take into account important recommendations made by many advocates and stakeholders including expanding the narrow material scope to all breaches of national law (rather than specified areas of EU laws); regulating centralised whistleblowing channels within a group company, or clarifying measures of protection for whistleblowers.
Civil society organizations are calling for a public consultation on the law as well as the consideration of their draft law on whistleblower protection produced to promote a responsible and comprehensive implementation of the Directive.