Whistleblowers play a key role in exposing corruption, public safety scandals and unethical behaviour. Unfortunately, all too often they can suffer fear, silence, and loneliness just from telling the truth.
Protect, along with our partner, WIN (Whistleblowing International Network) is supporting the campaign #TruthNeedsFriends by the Green/EFA Group in the EU Parliament which hopes to educate the wider public and employers about whistleblowing and why its so vital for society.
The European Union is on the verge of enacting new legislation that would change the lives of people who reveal the truth. People who tell the truth shouldn’t be punished. The Green/EFA Group in the EU Parliament is campaigning to ensure that the law does what it is meant to.
The new European Whistleblower Directive would oblige all EU governments to introduce minimum standards of protection for truth-tellers. These protections would include penalties for people that retaliate against whistleblowers or try to shut them up; an obligation for public and private bodies to set up channels for receiving reports and to keep the identity of the whistleblower confidential; and legal shields for whistleblowers so that, if for example they breach a confidentiality agreement, they would not be held liable for it.
So far, the European Parliament has been the strongest in defending the right to the truth. Now, the Parliament has to negotiate with the European Commission and the Council (where all the EU governments are represented) in order to draft the final version of the much-awaited whistleblower protection law. It’s a race against time to get the text right and adopt it before the upcoming European Parliament elections.
People who tell the truth shouldn’t be punished. It’s time to call on EU governments to protect whistleblowers, because right now, the #TruthNeedsFriends.
Take action here: https://www.greens-efa.eu/en/truthneedsfriends/