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Published date: 12 March 2019

European Commission welcomes provisional agreement to better protect whistleblowers across the EU (IP/19/1604)

Today the European Parliament and the Member States reached a provisional agreement on new rules that will guarantee a high level of protection for whistleblowers who report breaches of EU law.

These new rules, setting EU-wide standards of protection for whistleblowers, were first proposed by the European Commission in April 2018.

First Vice-President Frans Timmermans said: “We should protect whistleblowers from being punished, sacked, demoted or sued in court for doing the right thing for society. These new, EU-wide whistleblowers' protection rules do exactly that and will make sure they can report in a safe way on breaches of EU law in many areas. This will help tackle fraud, corruption, corporate tax avoidance and damage to people's health and the environment. We encourage Member States to put in place comprehensive frameworks for whistleblower protection based on the same principles.

Věra Jourová, Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality said: “Dieselgate, t