Despite public support for Snowden, German leaders oppose protecting whistleblowers
Public support for Edward Snowden in Germany has been overwhelming from the moment he exposed the US-led mass surveillance program in June 2013. “Vacancy for Snowden” banners have been hung all over Berlin, urging German officials to grant him political asylum. Germany’s leading newsmagazine, Der Spiegel, has called for his asylum. And members of the German parliament have travelled to Moscow to meet with Snowden.
Despite this widespread sympathy for Snowden, the German government continues to oppose granting legal protections to its own citizens who expose crime and corruption. Whistleblower protections in Germany are among the weakest in all of Europe, and improvements in the near future do not seem likely.
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ruling conservative party, the Christian Democrats, strongly opposes new whistleblower protections – even though following Snowden’s disclosures the NSA’s monitoring of her cell phone was revealed. The Christian Democrats have accepted large donations from companies and industry groups that at least theoretically are benefitting from the lack of a German whistleblower law: BMW, Bombardier, Daimler, EADS, Philip Morris, and trade groups representing the chemical, financial, metal, real estate and other industries.
Merkel’s party blocked the last attempt to pass a whistleblower law in Germany in 2012, and the Christian Democrats are trying just as hard to stymie current efforts.
Proposals by the Green and Left parties were debated at a public hearing at the German Bundestag on 16 March. Among those summoned by the Christian Democrats to speak against the proposals were business and employers’ groups. An organization of labor court judges – in whose hands the fate of whistleblowers lies – also spoke in opposition. Contrary to the actual situation, the opponents claimed current laws adequately protect whistleblowers from retaliation.
Munich-based engineering multinational Siemens, which has been unsympathetic toward its own whistleblowers in the past, went so far as to say that employees should be restricted in reporting misconduct to regulators and the public. Ironically, concerns about employees abusing whistleblower systems were debunked by corporations themselves. Executives from neither Siemens nor Daimler could recall notable cases of employees misusing their systems for nefarious purposes.
In an ironic twist, some of the opponents have tried to block Blueprint for Free Speech from making their comments public – even though hearing was open to the public, and a video of the complete hearing is online. Among them was Joachim Vetter of the German Federation of Labor Court Judges (DRB), whose remarks in opposition can be seen here.
A recent study by Blueprint for Free Speech and Transparency International Australia found that Germany’s whistleblower laws rank among the worst in G20 countries. Public employees are protected only if they report corruption or bribery, and people who work for private companies are not protected at all.
Two recent cases in Germany illustrate the consequences of not having comprehensive protections for whistleblowers enshrined in law. Geriatric nurse Brigitte Heinisch, fired after exposing poor treatment of nursing home patients, went up the entire ladder of German courts before finally winning her case at the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled in 2011 that her freedom of speech rights had been violated.
In a similar case that emerged this year, rescue worker Sascha Lex is now in the Berlin Labour Court trying to get his job back after being fired for reporting unhygienic conditions in ambulances that he said may have led to the death of a premature baby.