Recital 33
Directive on the protection of persons who report breaches of Union law · UE 2019/1937
| (33) | Reporting persons normally feel more at ease reporting internally, unless they have reasons to report externally. Empirical studies show that the majority of whistleblowers tend to report internally, within the organisation in which they work. Internal reporting is also the best way to get information to the persons who can contribute to the early and effective resolution of risks to the public interest. At the same time, the reporting person should be able to choose the most appropriate reporting channel depending on the individual circumstances of the case. Moreover, it is necessary to protect public disclosures, taking into account democratic principles such as transparency and accountability, and fundamental rights such as freedom of expression and the freedom and pluralism of the media, whilst balancing the interest of employers to manage their organisations and to protect their interests, on the one hand, with the interest of the public to be protected from harm, on the other, in line with the criteria developed in the case law of the ECHR. |
In Luxembourg, the law of 16 May 2023 on whistleblower protection translates Recital 33 into an operational duty: every employer with 50 employees or more (no threshold for the public sector) must implement a genuinely usable internal channel, with acknowledgment within 7 days and feedback within 3 months. The Office des rapports de signalement (OFRS), the cross-sector external authority established by this law, may impose criminal sanctions for obstruction of reporting (fines of EUR 1,250 to 25,000, doubled in case of recidivism) and for failure to deploy the internal channel.
Luxgap practice: set your internal SLAs at 5 days for acknowledgment and 8 weeks for feedback, below the statutory thresholds, to remain systematically more attractive than the OFRS and prevent external escalation.
