Thanks to a joint effort by TI Slovakia, Stop Corruption Foundation and WIN, the Government of Slovakia withdrew its proposal to change the Whistleblower Protection Law.
21 February 2024
The proposed changes would have seen the removal of whistleblower protection for law enforcement officers wishing to blow the whistle and significantly decreased the protections for all whistleblowers. The changes were viewed by whistleblowing experts inside and outside the country as being in direct violation of the 2019 EU Whistleblower Directive – see WIN’s letter and a legal analysis of the proposed changes that was sent to the Ministers of Justice and Interior, the General Prosecutor, the Speaker of the House and all members of the Slovakian Parliament, and copied to the President.
WIN’s Executive Director Anna Myers worked with WIN’s Slovakian partners during a two-day visit to Bratislava on the 17 and 18 February - meeting with concerned stakeholders and holding a press conference to highlight the seriousness of the attack on whistleblower protection to the general public, reaching close 1 million users (1/5 of the country's total population) through various media.
The proposed law will now go through the standard legislative process that the Government tried to bypass by presenting the new law to Parliament directly without consultation in December 2023.
The full press statement can be found here, in both English and Slovak.