Civil society organisations present the keys to the future whistleblower law to the Spanish Ministry of Justice

The ABRE coalition, of which Blueprint for Free Speech is a member, met with representatives of the Ministry of Justice in Spain today to discuss the transposition of the EU Whistleblowing Directive into national law. The meeting is a first step towards an open legislative process, which we hope will benefit from the experience and knowledge of organised civil society in Spain during the next steps of the transposition process.

The Ministry, which is immersed in the drafting of the future law, did not yet offer details of how this transposition is being carried out. It is necessary to move forward with conviction in the legislative process in order to achieve a satisfactory transposition by December 2021.

The organisations presented key points which should form part of the future law, such as the recognition and protection of communications made anonymously, as well as of whistleblowers who decide to do so, in line with legal and judicial precedents in Spain. 

Hay Derecho called for ambition in the transposition of the directive so that any legal or natural person can file a complaint regardless of the employment relationship they may have with the reported event called for by the directive. It also insisted on protecting communications about acts that may lead to unlawful conduct or failure to comply with the law. 

For its part, Xnet advocated the right of the whistleblower to choose the channel they consider most appropriate and asked not to establish any kind of hierarchy in this respect in the future law, while ADUCCO (United Whistleblowers Against Corruption) also asked to go beyond the minimums set out in the Directive when guaranteeing legal, material and psychological compensation for whistleblowers. 

The Plataforma en Defensa de la Libertad de Información (PDLI), for its part, has stressed the need for extensive protection of public disclosures, as well as of journalists who may receive them.

Another issue highlighted was the establishment of an agency at state level to protect whistleblowers that is independent and has sufficient means. In this sense, Más Democracia pointed to the Valencian Anti-Fraud Agency as a model to be followed. 

The Ministry undertook to ensure that the future law would offer "an adequate guarantee of protection for the whistleblower" and also to "create a framework of legal certainty for whistleblower channels so that they are effectively easy to manage", minimum requirements that are already provided for in the Directive, which must be implemented in a law before the end of next year. 

Blueprint for Free Speech is confident that this is a major step forward in transparency and that the experience of civil society in this area will be taken into account. "We hope that the formal legislative process will start as soon as possible and that the public consultation mentioned in the meeting will be opened in order to have a proposal for a law and start the parliamentary process," said Bruno Galizzi, the organisation's representative in Spain.