SAFE for Whistleblowers II (Strengthening and Fostering Enabling Environment for Whistleblowers in the European Union)

Whistleblowers are important players in national and European efforts to detect, investigate and address corruption. Their disclosures have exposed wrongdoings in public and private organisations, enhancing transparency and accountability and ensuring national and EU public funds can go where they should. Whistleblowers, by exercising their freedom of speech protected under Article 11 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, help enforce both national and EU laws.

If more individuals stepped forward to report problems to their organisations and authorities, or in certain situations, made public disclosures, many more instances of misconduct could be prevented or consequences mitigated. The three main reasons people give for not reporting corruption are:

1. The fear of negative consequences (legal, financial, reputational)

2. The belief that nothing will be done and their actions will not make a difference

3. The uncertainty about how, where and to whom to report corruption (TI Global Corruption Barometer).

Protecting whistleblowers from retaliation and providing accessible and reliable reporting channels where reports received are taken seriously and acted upon, together with a more positive social perception of whistleblowers, can encourage people to report wrongdoing and increase the likelihood that wrongdoing is uncovered and penalised.

The EU Directive 1937/2019, on the protection of persons reporting breaches of Union law, also known as the Whistleblowing Directive, provides a strong foundation to achieve uniform and robust whistleblower protection across the EU. Despite many delays, almost all the EU member states have passed laws to transpose the Directive into their national law. However, legislation is only the first step – for laws to be effective, they need to be adequately implemented. Stakeholders with a critical role in implementation, such as public and private entities, civil society organisations, trade unions, competent authorities, judges and journalists, need to play their part and need stronger capacity to do so. Potential whistleblowers and the general public need to know about the existing reporting channels and procedures and the rights provided under the Whistleblowing Directive and overcome their negative perception of whistleblowing.

Funded by the European Union and implemented by Transparency International and our National chapters and partners, SAFE for Whistleblowers II aims to support the establishment of an enabling environment for the protection of whistleblowers in the European Union, with a focus on Germany, Hungary, Italy and Poland. SAFE for Whistleblower II aims to scale up the EU-funded SAFE for Whistleblowers project project, which is currently active in the Czech Republic, France, Ireland, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Slovakia. This project expansion will leverage SAFE for Whistleblowers project outputs, tools, findings, and lessons learned.

Italy, Hungary, Germany, and Poland were among the last to adopt laws to transpose the EU Whistleblowing Directive, and all have shortcomings. Whistleblower protection is new to Germany and Poland, so the general public and all the other stakeholders involved in implementing the new law will have a lot to learn in little time. While Hungary and Italy have had a whistleblower protection legal framework for several years, implementation challenges have already been identified in Hungary and Italy.

To achieve this, we will work with all key stakeholders to tackle the barriers to creating such an environment – including:

• People’s lack of awareness, understanding and/or trust in reporting channels and whistleblower protection.

• Lack of knowledge and capacity of civil society, public and private organisations in correctly implementing the rules applying to them.

• Lack of knowledge and capacity of competent authorities and law enforcement agencies to effectively and coherently implement and enforce national whistleblower protection laws.

• Lack of available data to assess the effectiveness of national whistleblowing laws, and

• The risks of incoherence in the implementation of the Whistleblowing Directive impacting its effectiveness

SAFE for Whistleblowers keys objectives are:

• To increase knowledge of the general public, (potential) whistleblowers, CSOs, and journalists about whistleblowing and protection frameworks

• To improve implementation of whistleblowing laws at the workplace

• To improve implementation and enforcement of whistleblowing laws by national authorities

• To improve the availability of gender-disaggregated data to assess the effectiveness of national whistleblowing laws

• To improve the effectiveness and coherence of the Directive’s implementation

We will pay particular attention to the situation of women and other groups at risk of discrimination. The power imbalance between whistleblowers and those who might seek to quiet them is already an issue, and the intersection with unequal power relations and other inequalities experienced by women and other vulnerable workers such as LGBT+, migrants, temporary and low-paid workers needs to be further explored and better taken into account by all the stakeholders involved in the implementation of whistleblowing legislation.

Building on the results of past activities, synergies with other projects and innovative aspects in the field of whistleblower protection, we are taking a holistic approach to foster an enabling environment for whistleblowers by:

• Raising awareness on whistleblower protection laws and promoting the value of whistleblowing to safeguard the public interest by directly reaching out to the general public, potential whistleblowers and employers and indirectly by gaining the contribution of CSOs and journalists.

• Conducting public opinion polls to assess the perception and knowledge of the general public about whistleblowing, using the results to tailor our awareness-raising and educational campaigns.

• Coordinating advice and assistance to whistleblowers in Italy where a coalition of CSOs accredited by the national whistleblowing authority to provide advice and assistance to whistleblowers, persons concerned and others to ensure effective and coherent interpretation of the directive will be created.

• Conducting national assessments of organisations’ internal whistleblowing systems (IWS) to identify capacity building needs.

• Creating and piloting a framework with selected indicators to evaluate whistleblowing authorities to identify areas for improvement. TI-S will aim to help these authorities to evaluate their status and performance against internationally recognized principles and standards and to support them and their respective governments in fulfilling their mandates.

• Cooperating with national authorities by organising events dedicated to facilitating exchanges between competent authorities and CSOs from EU countries on topics where they can share experiences, challenges and good practices (e.g. on awareness raising, handling whistleblowers’ reports, support to whistleblowers).

• Building knowledge and capacity of beneficiaries and CSOs to review their own IWS using the self-assessment questionnaire and training materials developed under the SAFE4Whistleblowers project.

• Fostering mutual learning and exchange of good practices at the national and European level within as well as across stakeholders' groups (including the general public, potential whistleblowers, public and private organisations, judges, trade unions, journalists), with a special emphasis on national authorities and CSOs, to identify common challenges and best practices, cross-cutting issues and building consensus on policy recommendations to improve implementation of whistleblowing laws and the Directive.

• Collecting and analysing data on whistleblowing reports and retaliation cases, on public awareness and perception of whistleblowers and Organisations’ IWS as well as data from public databases, organisations’ and competent authorities’ annual reports and other open sources, allowing us to gain new insights and track trends.

• Mainstreaming gender and diversity by leveraging the findings of Safe4Whistleblowers to improve understanding of the linkages between gender, diversity and whistleblowing and to promote the representation of women and groups at risk of discrimination in internal and external whistleblowing systems.

• Using, updating and adapting tools developed in previous projects for more efficiency and benefit from lessons learned from Speak Up Europe and SAFE4Whistleblowers projects.