On September 25, 2024, the Polish act on the protection of whistleblowers will come into force. These are the first regulations in the Polish legal system comprehensively regulating the status of a whistleblower.
Provisions specify, inter alia, internal and external reporting rules and the protections provided to the whistleblower.
Entities affected by the new law
The Act applies to entities (including employers) for which, as of January 1 or July 1 of a given year, at least 50 persons (not only employees) perform paid work. Each such entity should establish the procedure to allow whistleblowers to report internally (so-called internal reporting procedure).
The Ministry of Family, Labor and Social Policy states that it is allowed to establish the procedure only on January 1, 2025, if the above-mentioned threshold is reached as of that date, even if the entity already employs 50 people.
The Ministry also states that only certain legal entities must have the procedure in place as early as September 25, 2024 – this refers to legal entities performing specific activities, e.g. financial services, products and markets and the prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing, transport safety and protection of the environment.
Failure to establish the procedure will result in a fine.
Internal reporting procedure
The main obligation is to establish an internal reporting procedure which should specify, among other things:
- who is authorised to receive whistleblowers’ reports;
- methods of reporting by the whistleblower;
- who is authorised to take follow up actions after receipt of a whistleblower’s report, including, inter alia, verification and further communication with the whistleblower;
- a procedure for handling whistleblowing information submitted anonymously;
- means of informing whistleblowers of the receipt of a report and actions taken;
- information on external reporting to the Ombudsman or public authorities (European Union entities, if applicable).
Required consultations
The implementation of the procedure requires consultation with the trade union organisation or, in the absence thereof, with the representatives of employed persons.
The consultation should last between 5 and 10 days, from the date of presentation of the draft internal reporting procedure. The procedure itself enters into force 7 days after it has been made known to the employed persons.
Register of internal reports
The entities are obliged to keep a register of internal reports containing, among other things, the following information:
- report number,
- subject matter of the violation,
- personal data of the whistleblower and the subject of the report,
- whistleblower’s contact address,
- date of the report,
- information on the follow-up actions taken,
- date the case was closed.
The following months will show how the new regulations are applied in practice and what influence they have on the labour market in Poland.
For any questions related to the Polish Labour Code or employment related topics, please reach out to our authors Monika Aniszewska and Bartłomiej Ostrowski or to our representatives Patrycja Zawirska or Grzegorz Ruszczyk. You can also visit our country’s page here.
