Parliament passes law to protect whistleblowers

On Wednesday, February 17, Parliament definitively adopted a bill aimed at better protecting and supporting whistleblowers.

Resulting from an agreement between deputies and senators, the text was the subject of a final positive vote of the Senate. This puts an end to three months of a legislative process.

This law, worked on with the Ministry of Justice, the Council of State and the associations, more precisely defines their status and guides their procedures. It also strengthens their rights and those of the people or associations assisting them, and facilitates their financial and psychological support, among other things.

It transposes into French law a European directive of 2019, going beyond what is required by European law, and corrects the imperfections of the pioneering law, known as “Sapin II”, of 2016, little used to date.

As a reminder, the whistleblower is defined as “a natural person who reports or discloses, without direct financial compensation and in good faith, information relating to a crime, offence, threat or harm to the general interest”.

A “circle of protection”

For MP Sylvain Waserman (MoDem), bearer of the law, the latter “deals with each stage in the life of whistleblowers. Their protection becomes a pillar of our democracies, alongside freedom of the press”.

For her part, Secretary of State Sarah El Haïry welcomed a text which “offers a circle of protection around the whistleblower”.

Certain exceptions provided

This new legislation provides for certain exceptions, such as facts and information covered by national defense secrecy, that of judicial deliberations or medical secrecy.

The text specifies and diversifies the channels internal to the company, or external, available to whistleblowers to validate their approach.

The whistleblower can therefore now, if he wishes, go directly through an external channel such as a Defender of Rights, the courts, an administrative authority or an authorized legal person.

The Defender of Rights will have a deputy specially responsible for assisting whistleblowers. Justice will also have additional tools to facilitate the defense of their rights.

Sanctions in case of hostility

The text also provides for sanctions against those who seek to stifle their action by multiplying hostile procedures, or subject them to reprisals.

But the law also intends to avoid the pitfall of “hasty, unfounded or abusive” alert procedures, underlined the rapporteur in the Senate, Catherine Di Folco.

Contrary to the wishes of the deputies of La France Insoumise, who notably pleaded the case of the founder of Wikileaks, the Australian Julian Assange threatened with being extradited from Great Britain to the United States, the text was not extended to foreign whistleblowers.