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Resolution 2300 (Council of Eur. Parl. Assembly)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 June 2020

David Lewis
David Lewis*
Affiliation:
David Lewis is Professor of Employment Law and Head of the Whistleblowing Research Unit at Middlesex University, United Kingdom. He is also Convenor of the International Whistleblowing Research Network.
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Extract

This Resolution was adopted in October 2019 following a report of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights. It has to be seen in the context of previous Council of Europe activity on this topic as well as the European Union (EU) Directive on the protection of persons who report breaches of Union law. The content of the EU Directive was agreed earlier in 2019 and EU Member States are obliged to transpose it into national legislation by December 2021.

Type
International Legal Documents
Information
International Legal Materials , Volume 59 , Issue 3 , June 2020 , pp. 487 - 494
Copyright
Copyright © 2020 by The American Society of International Law

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References

ENDNOTES

1 Directive 2019/1937/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of Oct. 23, 2019 on the protection of persons who report breaches of Union law, 2019 O.J. (L 305) 17.

2 Protecting Whistleblowers, Council of Eur. Com. Ministers Recommendation (2014) 7, https://search.coe.int/cm/Pages/result_details.aspx?ObjectId=09000016806fffd1.

3 Protection of “Whistle-blowers,” Council of Eur. Parl. Ass. Recommendation 1729 (2010), http://assembly.coe.int/nw/xml/XRef/Xref-XML2HTML-en.asp?fileid=17851.

4 There are 20 Council of Europe countries that are not EU Member States.

5 For example, in India and the United States.

6 See, e.g., Guja v. Moldova (No.2 ), App. No. 1085/10, Eur. Ct. H.R. (2018).

7 “Good faith” as a necessary ingredient of a qualifying disclosure was removed from the United Kingdom's Employment Rights Act 1996 when a public interest test was inserted.

8 A Best Practice Guide for Whistleblowing Legislation, Transparency International [hereinafter Best Practice Guide] (2018), p. 7, https://www.transparency.org/whatwedo/publication/best_practice_guide_for_whistleblowing_legislation.

9 Id., Principle 3.

10 Tshwane Principles on National Security and the Right to Information (2013), https://www.justiceinitiative.org/publications/tshwane-principles-national-security-and-right-information-overview-15-points.

11 The conditions are: (1) the information concerns wrongdoing by government or government contractors; (2) the person attempted to report the wrongdoing, unless there was no functioning body that was likely to undertake an effective investigation or if reporting would have posed a significant risk of destruction of evidence or retaliation against the whistleblower or a third party; (3) the disclosure was limited to the amount of information reasonably necessary to bring to light the wrongdoing; and (4) the whistleblower reasonably believed that the public interest in having the information revealed outweighed any harm to the public interest that would result from disclosure.

12 Best Practice Guide, supra, note 9.

13 G20 Compendium of Best Practices and Guiding Principles for Legislation on the Protection of Whistle-blowers, OECD (2011), https://www.oecd.org/g20/topics/anti-corruption/48972967.pdf.

14 Resource Guide on Good Practices in the Protection of Reporting Persons, U.N.O.D.C. (2015), https://www.unodc.org/documents/corruption/Publications/2015/15-04741_Person_Guide_eBook.pdf.