Source: independent.com.mt
The Minister for Justice Edward Zammit Lewis has announced amendments to the whistleblower protection framework in Malta to transpose the EU Directive on Whistleblowing during a press conference. Changes to the current legislation include extending protection to shareholders and to ‘facilitators’ of reporting.
It was separately reported in Malta Today that ‘reporting officers’ must be established in companies employing more than 50 staff and that officials believed the new framework would indeed be compliant with the EU Directive on Whistleblowing.
Despite the freedom of choice of the whistleblower in deciding where to report being a central tenet of the EU Directive, which explicitly protects persons who report directly externally of their employer to a competent authority even in the first instance, the article in The Independent reports:
“Ministry Davida Flores explained that a certain process has to be undertaken when reporting workplace malpractice. She said that the first step includes an internal disclosure process which requires an employee to disclose the issue to the internal reporting officer in order for the officer to move up the administrative chain to resolve the issue.
The next step would be external disclosure where if deemed necessary by the reporting officer, the relevant authorities could be involved in order to resolve the issue. The relevant authorities include MFSA, FIAU, The Office of the Ombudsman and others.”
Interested parties have written to the Ministry asking for a copy of the draft law to be made available but there has been no response and still no public consultation on the proposals to date.
The EU Directive must be fully transposed into the national legal systems of all 27 EU Member States by the 17 December 2021.“