This December, the EU Whistleblower Directive will be lowering the threshold for compliant reporting channels to companies of just 50 employees or those with an annual turnover or total assets of more than �10M. Companies that operate in Financial Services for EU members must comply with this Directive.

The directive requires that organisations operating within the EU provide whistleblower protection against retaliation. Internal whistleblowing channels' policies and procedures should be clear and easily accessible. Channels themselves need to be: identified; implemented; communicated and maintained.

This directive is important as it plays a key role in making sure that breaches of EU law do not cause potential harm to the public, environment, public procurement, financial services, and nuclear safety.

As the members of the EU are treated as equivalently regulated with shared political goals that do not deviate far from Guernsey's, we could see similar requirements introduced in the Bailiwick.

For our Maltese clients, the Directive was transposed into legislation on the 18th of December 2021, whilst those provisions relating to the establishing of internal reporting channels for legal entities operating in the private sector with 50 to 249 workers must be transposed two years after that, by 17th December 2023.

For this and all your compliance and regulatory needs, Aspida offers a range of services for an initial health check, developing policies and procedures to outsourcing using our GRC platform Resolver by Aspida.