While the 27 EU countries had until 17 December 2021 to transpose the European Directive 2019/1937 on the protection of whistleblowers into national law, several Member States have still not yet published a text. Only Denmark, Sweden and Malta have met the deadline. On 15 February 2023, and in light of the broadly missed deadline situation, the European Commission announced that it was referring the Czech Republic, Germany, Estonia, Spain, Italy, Luxembourg, Hungary and Poland to the European Court of Justice for failure to transpose the law. Although legislation has since been passed in Italy and Spain, the passage of Germany’s text has been delayed because on 10 February 2023 the Bundesrat (chamber of Länder representatives) rejected the document the Bundestag (parliament) had approved nearly two months earlier on 16 December 2022. The Bundesrat believed the bill went further than the requirements of the European Directive and imposed too many legal obligations on SMEs.
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