Five EU countries fined millions for delaying whistleblower protections

(CN) — The European Union’s highest court found on Thursday that five countries had failed to adopt EU regulations protecting whistleblowers quickly enough.

The European Court of Justice fined Germany, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Estonia and Luxembourg millions of euros after the countries did not incorporate 2019 rules to shield whistleblowers from reprisals in a timely way.

In the wake of the Panama Papers and the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica scandals, Brussels passed legislation preventing employees who reported fraud and abuse from being fired or sued. A 2024 report by the European Commission, however, said there had been “significant delay” in turning the directive into national law.

By the December 2021 deadline, only three of the 27 member states had fully adopted the rules.

“Failure to transpose the provisions of Directive 2019/1937 within the prescribed period necessarily undermines union law and its uniform and effective application, since breaches of that law may not be reported if persons who are aware of such breaches do not enjoy protection against possible reprisals,” the three-judge panel wrote.

The court issued fines depending on the GDP of each country: 34 million euros ($36.7 million) for Germany; 2.3 million euros ($2.48 million) for the Czech Republic; 1.75 million euros ($1.89 million) for Hungary; and 500,000 euros ($534,000) for both Luxembourg and Estonia.

German legislation didn’t go into effect until 2023, two years past the deadline.

Estonia, which still has not fully adopted the directive, is also facing a daily fine of 1,500 euros ($1,600) until it complies.

The European Union moved to protect whistleblowers after a series of scandals came to light following insiders sharing confidential information. Meta Platforms, the parent of Facebook, has paid millions in fines and settlements after an ex-Cambridge Analytica employee revealed in 2018 that the political consulting firm had used data from the social media site for the presidential campaigns of Ted Cruz and Donald Trump.

The person who leaked the Panama Papers, some 11.5 million pages of documents from Panamanian offshore law firm Mossack Fonseca, remains anonymous because of fear of reprisals. The documents tied dozens of world leaders to offshore bank accounts.

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