The legislative process seems to be gathering pace in the Chamber of Deputies. After moral harassment in the workplace, it was the protection of whistleblowers in Luxembourg that mobilised MPs on 2 May.
A bad pupil, Luxembourg has delayed transposing the directive, which was due by 17 December 2021 at the latest. Having made a commitment, as part of the 2018-2023 coalition agreement, to rapidly transpose the directive into Luxembourg law, it is now a year and a half after the deadline that Luxembourg is adopting new legislation aimed at guaranteeing minimum standards of protection for whistleblowers in Luxembourg.
The Luxembourg government has chosen to extend the material scope of the directive to all national law. As a result, acts or omissions that run counter to directly applicable provisions of national or European law constitute a violation that can be reported for the purposes of the law.
The law applies to whistleblowers working in the private or public sector who have obtained information about breaches in a professional context, such as employees, civil servants, but also shareholders, people whose employment relationship has ended or not yet begun, subcontractors, etc.
Legal entities in the private sector with at least 50 employees must set up internal whistleblowing channels enabling whistleblowers to inform their employer in confidence about significant breaches of national law.
As a result of these new provisions, all forms of retaliation, including threats and attempts of retaliation, such as suspension of an employment contract, lay-off, dismissal, non-renewal or early termination of a fixed-term employment contract or equivalent measures are prohibited.
In the event of non-compliance with these new provisions, the legislator has introduced a range of sanctions. The competent authorities may impose an administrative fine of between €1,500 and €250,000 on companies that fail to comply with the obligation to set up internal reporting channels, among other things. In addition, those who take retaliatory measures against whistleblowers or bring abusive proceedings against them may be fined between €1,250 and €25,000.
There is also provision for a prison sentence of between eight days and three months and a fine of between €1,500 and €50,000 for whistleblowers who knowingly report or publicly disclose false information.
Finally, these new provisions are in addition to the specific provisions already in place to set up whistleblowing systems and protect whistleblowers in the fight against corruption, influence peddling and illegal interest taking, as well as in the fight against market abuse.