European trade union conference on whistleblowing held in Madrid just weeks before the deadline for the Spanish government to implement the EU Directive on whistleblower protection

A conference on whistleblowing channels was held in Madrid on Thursday 21 and Friday 22 October. This event took place within the framework of the 6th Eurocadres Congress in the Spanish capital.  Eurocadres is an umbrella organization of trade union federations from all over Europe. Blueprint For Free Speech was one of the organizations that participated and contributed its own panel to Eurocadres conference.

Eurocadres chose the Spanish capital as the venue for this conference. Spain is one of the few member states of the European Union that as of today has not implemented to its legislation the EU Directive 2019/1937 on whistleblowing that was approved in Europe in 2019. This law must be implemented in all EU countries by December 17, 2021 at the latest.

Blueprint For Free Speech (BFFS) has been working steadily for the past four years for the Spanish government to implement this Directive.  In this context, with the deadline approaching, BFFS organized a panel discussion on the Spanish case. Participants included investigative and data journalists Pilar Velasco (Cadena SER, InfoLibre) and Daniele Grasso (El País), and two Blueprint members Naomi Colvin, Program Director in Ireland, Belgium and the UK, and Bruno Galizzi, who coordinates Blueprint's campaign in Spain, and who is also working on Mexico’s national transposition. Mexico is expected to pass its first law on the protection of whistleblowers soon.

Daniele Grasso analyzed the figure of the whistleblower: ”I think it is quite difficult to give a prototype of whistleblower. I didn’t study the topic from an academic point of view, so it has just based on my experience and my colleagues' experience. I think people normally  have an image thanks to the movies on the whistleblower and it is basically a guy who meets the journalist like in the garage be night Giving him an envelope.

 But then if we think about the biggest leaks of the last 10-15 years of the 21st century, actually all the people, the biggest whistleblower that we always have in mind, have something in common that is their capacity to manage a big amount of data. I am thinking from Edward Snowden to Hervé Falciani to the guys or people that we don’t know who are behind the Panama paper or the Pandora papers. They all have in common that they can work with a big amount of data and in this sense, it has been also really important that the journalist on the other site, they also prepare to work with this amount of data”. The audience was very interested in the experience of Grasso as an investigative and data journalist at Panama and Pandora papers.

Bruno Galizzi presented his recent research about whistleblowing channels “Trust has a direct impact on the tendencies on the preferences to address internal channels and I found that it was very significant piece of evidence to understand how those channels should be address and design. A high level of trust in organizations of course has a higher level of preferences when addressing those channels Lower level of trust has higher tendency to go externally. When it comes to anonymity we found something similar because people with lower levels of trust have a stronger preference to go anonymous when reporting from doing” said Bruno.

Naomi Colvin analyzed the situation of EU member state on whistleblowers protection: “If we look at the legal framework for whistleblowers across the EU, every country in the EU has until the end of the year to transpose the EU Whistleblowing directive which is a pretty good law, not perfect, but a pretty good high standard of whistleblowing protection into the National law. We are not quite there yet, partly because of the pandemic, a lot of countries across the EU haven’t been able to meet that.

If we are looking at the laws that are in place at the moment some countries have pretty good whistleblowing laws: Malta, Ireland, France have whistleblowing laws for a while, more recently Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia and Croatia have passed pretty decent laws.. Denmark has a law on the way. I think other countries will go quite quickly to fill the Directive, but still there are some gaps across to the EU, that at this point probably they shouldn’t be” said Naomi.

At the end of the panel, Blueprint was talking to Pilar Velasco, who was the moderator, about her experience with whistleblowers:

“I have been given information that is necessary and relevant to uncover corruption cases at the level of the state administration, at the level of the government, ministries or even local governments or public companies, and then it depends on the type of source.... when they are vulnerable sources that are public officials who are giving you information because they believe in the greater good of public information and reporting a case of corruption, you have to work very well with them on the type of documentation that you need them to provide and that these people are not put at risk because you are protected by the constitution, by article 20 of the constitution, the right to information when it is relevant and for public opinion, but they are not. Working with them is important.

The whistleblowers were afraid personally, they were afraid at work, they were afraid in their families, they were afraid socially. So, we must not lose that perspective to imagine how the media have had to work with them and the consequences for them too, to be working to reveal cases of corruption," said Pilar to the audience.

The conference was organized for Eurocadres with the presence of President Nayla Glaise and former president Martin Jefflen.

Some of the experts who participated in the different sections were Vigjilenca Abazi (Maastricht University), Christel Mercadé Piqueras (European Commission), Wim Vandekerckhove (Greenwich University), Isabelle Schömann from (ETUC), Sophie Bine (UGICT-CGT), Laura Valli (ANAC), Ida Nowers and Anna Myers (Whistleblowing International Network), Nadja Salson (EPSU), Rik van Steenbergen (FNV), Veronika Nad (Blueprint For Free Speech), Radu Nicolae (Syene Centre for Education), Virginie Rozière (European Parliament), Nick Aiossa (Transparency International), Camille Petit (EFJ) and Peter Matjašič (OSIFE).

All photos © Fotos Agustín Millán