In 2017 the European Commission, in its Communication on ‘EU law: better results through better application,’ stressed that: “[e]ffective enforcement of EU rules – from the fundamental freedoms, food and product safety to air quality to the protection of the single currency – matters to Europeans and affects their daily lives […]. Often, when issues come to the fore […] it is not the lack of EU legislation that is the problem but rather the fact that the EU law is not applied effectively.” In order to increase available enforcement mechanisms to promote effectiveness, the European Commission sought an approach to enabling indirect enforcement via private actors, in legislation on the protection of whistle-blowers, proposed in 2018. By October 2019, the Directive on the protection of persons who report breaches of Union law (henceforth referred to as the Directive) was adopted. The Directive is the first EU horizontal piece of legislation on the protection of whistle-blowers.
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