Per our previous post, the European Parliament and the Member States agreed to adopt new rules that would set the standard for protecting whistleblowers across the EU from dismissal, demotion, and other forms of retaliation when they report breaches of various areas of EU law. According to a press

Daniel Ornstein
EU Agrees to Set the Floor for Whistleblower Protection Across All Member States
According to a press release issued by the European Commission today, the European Parliament and the Member States have agreed to adopt new rules that set the standard for protecting individuals who blow the whistle on breaches of EU law from dismissal, demotion, and other forms of retaliation. This reform,…
New UK Regulations to Govern Whistleblowing in Financial Institutions
This month, the FCA and PRA announced a new regime for whistleblowing that will start to be phased in from March 2016. This is part of the broader desire on the part of the UK regulators to encourage individuals to raise concerns and challenge poor practice and behaviors within the financial institutions. The regulations build-on and formalize examples of good practice within the financial services industry.
UK Whistleblowing Protection Extended to Partners
In the UK, whistleblowing law is based on a statute prohibiting a “worker” being dismissed or subjected to any other detriment because of having made a “protected disclosure”. Until this week, the general view was that the definition of “worker”, and therefore whistleblowing protection, did not extend to partners. There were many reasons for this view, such as the fact that discrimination legislation (which protects partners as well as other workers), is, in contrast to whistleblowing legislation, explicit as to its application to partners. However, this week, a landmark Supreme Court decision, Clyde & Co. LLP v. Van Winkelhof (overturning a decision of the Court of Appeal) held that partners were “workers” and therefore legislation protecting whistleblowers applies to partners in the same way that it applies to employees.
UK Whistleblowing – tips on the rise and the possibility of bounty
Whistleblowing tips reported to the Financial Conduct Authority (the “FCA”), one of the UK bodies with responsibility for regulating the financial services industry, have increased 35 per cent in the past 12 months according to information received by Kroll. Kroll found that between November 2012 and October 2013, the FCA received 5,150 whistleblowing reports to its helpline compared to 3,813 in the same period in the previous year.
Whistleblowing in the UK – the latest developments and a review of the law
In recent months, the UK has seen a growing focus on the protection afforded to whistleblowers. This attention has emerged because of recurring question linking diverse scandals, such as phone hacking and those that have hit the health service and the banking sector: namely, would a different system to encourage and protect whistleblowers have mitigated or even avoided the problems that have emerged.
ALJ Applies Villanueva Factors, Finds Overseas Employee’s Whistleblower Claim “Territorial”
In Dos Santos v. Delta Airlines, Inc., 2012-AIR-20 (ALJ Jan. 11, 2013), an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) of the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) examined whether the facts alleged by the complainant required a territorial or extraterritorial application of one of the whistleblowing statutes enforced by the DOL. This blog posting summarizes the ALJ’s decision and analyzes the impact for multinational employers.