In order to harmonize the legal regulation, the EU issued a Directive on the protection of whistleblowers as part of its legislative work in 2019. The Directive itself should provide a safe environment for whistleblowers, and therefore the EU believes that the Directive is important and that its timely transposition must be insisted upon. However, the transposition deadline for the Czech Republic has already passed at the end of 2021.
Although the Czech Republic tried to implement the Directive on time, in the form of a government bill or the currently discussed bill on whistleblower protection, about which we have already informed you, it did not meet its obligations on time. The European Commission has therefore decided to use one of the sanctions for late transposition of directives by Member States, namely an action before the EU Court of Justice, in which it seeks to impose a fine, the total amount of which will depend on the length of delay of proper transposition of the directive. The penalty will now depend entirely on the speed with which the Czech Republic passes the Whistleblower Protection Act, which implements the Directive. This is, among other things, the first time that the Czech Republic will pay a fine for late transposition of an EU directive.
However, the Czech Republic is not the only Member State that has not transposed the Whistleblower Protection Directive in time. In addition to the Czech Republic, this includes Poland, Belgium, Spain, Germany and other countries.
