Most European Union nations are doing little to nothing to protect whistleblowers from retaliation, according to a new report released this week by Transparency International.

The report, Whistleblowing in Europe, found that only four of the 27 countries studied had adequate whistleblower protection laws in place. In those four countries -- Luxembourg, Romania, Slovenia, and the United Kingdom – a corporate or government employee disclosing serious fraud or wrongdoing would receive sufficient legal protection from dismissal, harassment, or other retaliation.

The report found that 16 countries partially protect whistleblowers while seven countries have either no protections or severely inadequate protections in place.  That is despite the fact that all but two of the 27 countries have signed onto the United Nations Convention Against Corruption, which includes a requirement to consider implementing whistleblower protections. Many of the laws that do exist are vaguely written or contain loopholes, the report found. Others lack confidentiality guarantees, protections from defamation claims, or methods for whistleblowers to disclose their claims.

The anti-corruption watchdog also pointed out that in the countries with partial laws, whistleblowers may come forward under the belief they will be protected only to find that not to be the case.

“Whistleblowers are very important to the fight against corruption,” Anne Koch, TI's regional director for Europe and Central Asia, said in a statement. “They take on risks that many, if not most, people are unwilling to assume, and they expose crimes that few are interested in or brave enough to report.”

According to the report, roughly one third of fraud worldwide is exposed by whistleblowers or other tipsters, which is more than auditors, the police, and security staff combined.

The risk of retaliation is real, the report said, citing examples of whistleblowers in Austria, Estonia, and Portugal who were fired after exposing wrongdoing. In contrast, TI highlighted the 2000 case of Toni Fernandes, the CFO of a telecom company in the U.K. who exposed fraudulent expense claims submitted by the company's managing director. While Fernandes was fired from his job, the whistleblower subsequently received a six-figure compensation award from the U.K. Employment Tribunal and the executive in question left the firm.

The lack of adequate legal protections also can act as a deterrent for would-be whistleblowers to come forward in time to stave off a tragedy or financial scandal, the report said. It pointed to cases like the 2010 flooding of Hungarian villages by aluminum waste, a 1987 ferry accident in Belgium that left 193 people dead, and a 2004 phone-tapping scandal in Greece, as examples of situations in which people knew of problems beforehand but did not come forward in time.

Just last month, the European Commission signaled it would not move forward at this point with a request by European Parliament to propose legislation for an EU-wide whistleblower protection law before the end of the year.

Transparency International is urging all of the EU countries to adopt and enforce their own comprehensive whistleblower protections for both government and corporate workers. The watchdog group, celebrating its 20th anniversary this week, praised EU countries including Austria, Denmark, France, and Italy for making recent attempts to strengthen whistleblower protections. It also pointed to proposals to strengthen protections in Finland, Greece, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Slovakia.

While detailed analysis of each country can be found in the report, below is a quick summary of how the 27 countries stack up.

·         Advanced Protection: Luxembourg, Romania, Slovenia, United Kingdom

·         Partial Protection: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Sweden

·         None/Very Limited Protection: Bulgaria, Finland, Greece, Lithuania, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain

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