It is official. The Whistleblower Protection Directive is reality from today. On 16 December 2019 the directive enters into force following its publication in the EU Official Journal 20 days ago. This marks the start of a two-year period during which the Member States must implement the Directive into national legislation. This should also be a call to those who were involved in promoting the Directive in the first place to get active again to advocate for improving the national legislation in all Member States.

It has been a long and hard work. For a legislative process in EU it has however gone very fast. When Eurocadres launched an open invitation to the first meeting in April 2016 of what would become the platform WhistleblowerProtection.EU, the Commission was still arguing that there was no appropriate legal basis and a directive could not become reality. This was only three and a half years ago.

Martin Jefflén
President of Eurocadres