The Senate reconsidered and passed the Public Interest Whistleblower Protection Act on Thursday. Senators heeded the objections of President Klaus Iohannis, but kept in place a controversial amendment that prevents anonymous reporting. With 76 votes “for”, eight “against” and three abstentions, the bill will be discussed in the Chamber of Deputies, which in this case is also a forum for decision-making.

One of the amendments retained in controversial form prohibits anonymous reporting, inter alia reports should include the quality of the person making the report.

The Chairman of the Legal Commission of the Senate, Christian-Augustin Niculescu-Tagarlash, said that due to the adopted amendments, both the rights of whistleblowers and the individual rights of individuals are respected. He named the areas in which the whistleblower law does not apply: national security, medicine, protection of information between a lawyer and a client.

“Individual rights are respected and guaranteed, but the ability of Romanians to provide useful information to identify and detect violations of the law is encouraged,” Niculescu-Tagarlash said, according to Agerpres.

The plenary session of the Senate voted to accept the report of the Legal Commission and granted the request for re-interrogation of the President of Romania, taking into account the head of state’s objection.

The decision-making body in this case is the Chamber of Deputies.

The Whistleblower Act was quickly passed by Parliament at the end of the summer legislative session. Civil society strongly opposed the draft law, and Klass President Iohannis sent it back to parliament for reconsideration.

Controversial changes to the law on whistleblowers

• the possibility of anonymous reporting has been eliminated, thus excluding the presumption of good faith of the whistleblower;
• whistleblowers have the right to publicly disclose information about a violation of the law only after three months and only on condition of prior notification to the internal organization,
• whistleblower reports must be destroyed after two years;
• very small administrative-territorial units, less than 10,000 inhabitants, cannot unite to apply the law, contrary to the recommendations of the Directive
• companies with less than 50 employees in the field of energy, capital market, investment funds, insurance, voluntary pension, etc. are exempt from establishing or maintaining internal reporting channels and procedures for internal reporting and follow-up
• reduced by two-thirds the fine for at least halving certain reprisals in connection with the same report.