Source: advokatnidenik.cz
A new whistleblowing law to transpose the EU Directive on whistleblowing is progressing through Parliament in the Czech Republic.
The Senate technically approved the Bill on the last day of the 30-day time period, by not voting for or against it. Therefore, the Bill was passed by Senate without any amendments and is now waiting to be signed by the President of the Republic.
The Bill can be summarised as a very minimalistic approach to implementing the Directive with one exception – the “material scope” – which is the nature of breaches which will be protected when reported. Protected reports shall include not only breaches of EU law, as required by the Directive, but also criminal offences and misdemeanors with an upper limit of fines of at least CZK 100,000. In practice, this will mean all labor-related misdemeanors are within scope.
In the case of anonymous reporting – if the identity of the reporting person, and the individuals they seek to protect, can be inferred from the case, they are entitled to protection from the moment their identity becomes known to the person who may expose them to retaliation.
The Ministry of Justice will be responsible for the operation of the external whistleblowing channel. However, in practice, the Ministry has a very limited mandate and will mainly forward notifications to the relevant authorities. It will not function as a independent authority, as has been established in several other EU Member States.
The law also omits any provisions of legal assistance and other support measures for whistleblowers.
It is likely the President will not use his veto and the Whistleblower Protection Act will come into effect on 1 August 2023.