Promise History
The Netherlands - Transposition of the EU Directive on Whistleblowing
21-Jan-2021
Transparency International have published a blog article which discusses the governments approach to transposition of the EU Directive on Whistleblowing into national law.
The current Dutch draft Bill demonstrates that the Government has chosen to adopt a minimal implementing of the Directive. This is despite repeated encouragement to widen scope to cover breaches of national law.
The authors ‘ The Netherlands showing other EU Countries what not to do when transposing EU Whistleblower Directive’ state:
“It is distressing that the quality of the law is apparently sacrificed to procedures and deadlines. Why has the Bill been issued for consultation if the Ministry had no intention to take the inputs received into account? This seems like a foolish exercise and anything but a transparent and participatory democratic process.”
Transposition of the Directive must be completed before the deadline of 17 December 2021. The Ministry of Internal Affairs has declared that amendments to improve the draft law are now ‘unfortunately impossible.’
TI Netherlands official response to public consultation on the draft proposal can be found here (Dutch.)
Significant delays are expected to the process following a change in government in January with general elections expected to take place in March 2021. Progress in transposition will be updated to a dedicated web page here.
21-Dec-2020
A draft Bill to implement the EU Directive on Whistleblowing has recently been submitted for advice to the Advisory Division of the Council of State. After receipt and processing of that advice, the Bill will be submitted to the Lower House as soon as possible.
10-Sep-2020
The Dutch government have published all responses received to public consultation on the draft Bill to implement the EU Directive into national law.
31-Jul-2020
Public consulation has been launched in The Netherlands on draft law to implement EU Directive on Whistleblowing is to be held between the 31-07-2020 and 10-09-2020.
01-May-2020
It is expected that the Dutch Bill to implement the Whistleblower Directive will be brought up for consultation in July 2020. As the Whistleblower Authority Act will be evaluated in this period as well, possibly the same legal process will be utilized for this according to the footnote on P.10 of Transparency International Nederland (TI-NL) report on ‘Whistleblowing Frameworks 2019: Assessing Companies in Trade, Industry, Finance and Energy in The Netherlands’
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