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New legislation on whistleblowing in the Czech Republic

Czech Republic
23/05/2019
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Currently in the Czech Republic, employees have no other option on how to report unlawful activity than reporting it directly to their supervisor or to the respective state authority. This has been found to be rather ineffective as in most cases ‘whistleblowers’ fear the consequences to their professional life and future career and therefore, often they do not report anything. In order to promote exposure of any kind of employer’s information or activity that is illegal or unethical, the Czech government submitted a bill on the protection of whistleblowers.

The proposed wording for the bill states that certain employers shall be obliged to create an internal whistleblowing system, enabling the employees to report unlawful activities and receive direct feedback on their notice. The bill presupposes that such an employer will have to either create an internal department, which will take care of reporting or outsource the provision of this system. The bill imposes the above obligation on obliged persons according to the AML Act, contracting authorities pursuant to the Public Procurement Act and employers with a total annual turnover exceeding EUR 10,000,000 or with more than 49 employees. Companies, which create a reporting system according to Corporate Criminal Liability Act, shall be exempt from the proposed obligation to create the whistleblowing system. The bill further stresses that any employee, who reports any potential unlawful activity, shall be protected from any negative consequences from the employer.

The bill suggests that a special agency shall be created within the Ministry of Interior in order to receive reports from whistleblowers and to protect their identity where necessary. The employees shall be exempt from contractual confidentiality, which shall enable them to lodge a notice; however, the employees shall not be exempt from a confidentiality obligation pursuant to other acts.

The recently introduced bill is still subject to legislative procedure and thus changes are likely to be made. We will monitor the situation and inform you about further developments.

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