Speaking Up: Protecting Whistleblowers in Central and Eastern Europe|CEELI Institute – Central and Eastern European Law Initiative

Speaking Up: Protecting Whistleblowers in Central and Eastern Europe

Summary

The creation of legal protections for whistleblowers is an integral part of an overall anti-corruption strategy, and an important anti-corruption tool. This report focuses on efforts of individual European Union (EU) member states to implement, via their own national laws, the recent EU Directive 2019/1937 on the protection of persons who report breaches of European Union law. The new EU Directive aims to provide world-class whistleblowing protections for those who speak up against wrongdoing. If successfully implemented, the Directive has the potential to have a transformative impact on governance, integrity and anti-corruption efforts in the EU.

This report focuses specifically on efforts to introduce whistleblower protection legislation in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia, and offers practical recommendations to aid the implementation of the EU Directive in each of these jurisdictions. The CEELI Institute is continuing to partner with civil society organizations in each of the relevant jurisdictions on follow up efforts to implement the recommendations: the Bulgarian Institute of Legal Initiatives, K-Monitor (Hungary), Expert Forum (Romania), and Transparency International Slovakia. This project was made possible through a grant from the US Department of State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL).

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