Whistleblowing: the new deadline for the Italian Government 

The Italian Government has a new deadline to adopt the necessary legislation to implement Directive (UE) no. 2019/1937 concerning “the protection of persons who report Union law violations” (the “Directive”), since the December 17, 2021, deadline has been missed.  

In particular, according to the Law no. 127/2022 entered into force on September 10, 2022, the Parliament delegated the Government to adopt a legislative decree to implement the Directive.  

The goal is to implement such directive no later than December 10, 2022, in compliance with the following principle and criteria: 

1. Where needed, amend the Italian regulation concerning the protection of people reporting violations in private or public workplace (so called “whistleblower”); 

2. Ensure coordination among the existing Italian provisions and those set forth by the Directive, in order to guarantee a high level of protection to the whistleblower; 

3. Provide for the whistleblower more favorable provisions than the ones set for by the Directive, provided that those of the Directive will be applied in any case. 

In the light of the above, the Italian government shall definitely change the current Law no. 179/2017 that regulates the protection of whistleblowers, in order to be compliant with the Directive. The main measures of the Directive to be implemented include the following: 

• Define the people who fall among the whistleblower, including self-employed, shareholders and members of the administrative, management or supervisory body of a company, including non-executive members, volunteers and paid and unpaid trainees, and any person working under the supervision and direction of contractors, subcontractors and suppliers; 
• Ensure greater protection for whistleblower; 

• Implement internal reporting channels before reporting through external channels; 
• Ensure the confidentiality of the identity of the whistleblower as well as privacy protection according to the Regulation (EU) 2016/679. 

All we have to do is to wait for the publication of the legislative decree implementing the Directive.