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One Size Fits All? Handling Public Health and Environmental Risks in French Whistleblowing Legislation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 May 2023
Abstract
French whistleblower legislation establishes a unified legal regime for the treatment of reports and for the protection of whistleblowers. Drawing on French whistleblower law, recently amended by the transposition of Directive 2019/1937 of 23 October 2019, this article examines whether the specific features of whistleblowing in relation to public health and environmental risks are adequately addressed by this unified regime. The article identifies four key factors for the effective handling of whistleblowing relating to public health and the environment: (1) the possibility of protecting whistleblowers who report facts gathered outside the workplace; (2) the possibility of protecting legal persons as whistleblowers; (3) the possibility of carrying out in-depth investigations to characterise the reality of the risks reported; and (4) the possibility of archiving whistleblowing in order to detect weak signals of risks over the long term. In these four areas, the article provides a nuanced diagnosis of the situation in French law and offers suggestions for improvement.
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References
1 D Lewis (ed), A Global Approach to Public Interest Disclosure: What Can We Learn from Existing Whistleblowing Legislation and Research? (Cheltenham, Edward Elgar 2010); B Fasterling, “Whistleblower protection: a comparative law perspective” in AJ Brown, D Lewis, R Moberly and W Vandekerckhove (eds), International Handbook on Whistleblowing Research (Cheltenham, Edward Elgar 2014); OECD, Committing to Effective Whistleblower Protection (Paris, Éditions OCDE 2016); G Thüsing and G Forst (eds), Whistleblowing – A Comparative Study (Berlin, Springer 2016); CR Apaza and Y Chang (eds), Whistleblowing in the World: Government Policy, Mass Media and the Law (London, Palgrave Macmillan 2017); D Skupień, Towards a Better Protection of Workplace Whistleblowers in the Visegrad Countries, France and Slovenia (Lodz, Lodz University Press 2021).
2 Directive (EU) 2019/1937 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 October 2019 on the protection of persons who report breaches of Union law [2019] OJ L305/17; V Abazi, “The European Union Whistleblower Directive: A ‘Game Changer’ for Whistleblowing Protection?” (2020) 49 Industrial Law Journal 640; D Lewis, “The EU Directive on the Protection of Whistleblowers: A Missed Opportunity to Establish International Best Practices?” (2020) 9 E-Journal of International and Comparative Labour Studies 1; V Abazi, “Whistleblowing in the European Union” (2021) 58 Common Market Law Review 813; A Van Waeyenberge and Z Davies, “The Whistleblower Protection Directive (2019/1937): A Satisfactory but Incomplete System” (2021) 12 European Journal of Risk Regulation 236.
3 JP Near, MT Rehg, JR Van Scotter and MP Miceli, “Does Type of Wrongdoing Affect the Whistle-Blowing Process?” (2004) 14 Business Ethics Quarterly 219; AK Vadera, RV Aguilera and BB Caza, “Making Sense of Whistle-Blowing’s Antecedents: Learning from Research on Identity and Ethics Programs” (2009) 19 Business Ethics Quarterly 553, 564; M Somers and JC Casal, “Type of Wrongdoing and Whistle-blowing: Further Evidence that Type of Wrongdoing Affects the Whistle-blowing Process” (2011) 40 Public Personnel Management 151; SN Robinson, JC Robertson and MB Curtis, “The effects of contextual and wrongdoing attributes on organizational employees’ whistleblowing intentions following fraud” (2012) 106 Journal of Business Ethics 213.
4 O Leclerc, Protéger les lanceurs d’alerte. La démocratie technique à l’épreuve de la loi (Paris, Lextenso 2017).
5 Loi n° 2007-1598 du 13 novembre 2007 relative à la lutte contre la corruption.
6 Loi n° 2013-907 du 11 octobre 2013 relative à la transparence de la vie publique.
7 Loi n° 2013-1117 du 6 décembre 2013 relative à la lutte contre la fraude fiscale et la grande délinquance économique et financière.
8 Loi n° 2011-2012 du 29 décembre 2011 relative au renforcement de la sécurité sanitaire du médicament et des produits de santé.
9 Loi n° 2013-316 du 16 avril 2013 relative à l’indépendance de l’expertise en matière de santé et d’environnement et à la protection des lanceurs d’alerte.
10 Loi n° 2016-1691 du 9 décembre 2016 relative à la transparence, à la lutte contre la corruption et à la modernisation de la vie économique.
11 The Directive does not protect whistleblowers who report on working conditions and health and safety at work (Abazi, supra, note 2, 646).
12 Loi n° 2022-401 du 21 mars 2022 visant à améliorer la protection des lanceurs d’alerte.
13 Commission nationale de la déontologie et des alertes en santé publique et environnement (cnDAspe).
14 The 2016 law removed the prerogative given to this commission by the 2013 law to define the criteria on which the admissibility of an alert is based and to refer a report to the competent ministers, who were then responsible for informing the commission of the follow-up action taken and explaining the reasons for their decisions.
15 The Sapin 2 law was carried by the Minister of the Economy, with the support of the Conseil d’Etat (Conseil d’Etat, Le droit d’alerte: signaler, traiter, protéger [Paris, La Documentation française 2016]), and could draw on international conventions on corruption (Council of Europe, Criminal Law Convention on Corruption, 1999, Art 22; Civil Law Convention on Corruption, 1999, Art 9). In contrast, the law of 16 April 2013 on the independence of expertise in health and environmental matters and the protection of whistleblowers resulted from a motion by Green MPs, with a minority in Parliament and much fewer institutional and symbolic resources. See Leclerc, supra, note 4.
16 The work carried out by the cnDAspe is described in its annual reports, which have been published every year since 2017. This information is complemented by observations made by the author, who has been serving as an appointed member of the National Commission since December 2020.
17 S Ayers and SE Kaplan, “Wrongdoing by Consultants: An Examination of Employees’ Reporting Intentions” (2005) 146 Journal of Business Ethics 787. See also A Dyck, A Morse and L Zingales, “Who Blows the Whistle on Corporate Fraud?” (2010) LXV The Journal of Finance 2213; J Etienne, “Different ways of blowing the whistle: Explaining variations in decentralized enforcement in the UK and France” (2015) 9 Regulation & Governance 309; B Culiberg and KK Mihelič, “The Evolution of Whistleblowing Studies: A Critical Review and Research Agenda” (2017) 146 Journal of Business Ethics 787, 788.
18 The annual report of the National Commission on Ethics and Alerts in Public Health and the Environment indicates that a significant proportion of the information reported was obtained outside a professional setting: see cnDAspe, Rapport annuel 2020, p 19 et sqq.
19 CM/Rec (2014) 7 (emphasis added).
20 Halet v. Luxembourg App no 21884/18 (ECtHR, 11 May 2021).
21 PB Jubb, “Whistleblowing: A Restrictive Definition and Interpretation” (1999) 21 Journal of Business Ethics 77.
22 M Fodder, J Lewis and J Bowers, “Whistleblowing Detriment and the Employment Field: Has the Court of Appeal Taken a Wrong Turn?” (2020) 49 Industrial Law Journal 397.
23 However, pursuant to Art 8 of the Sapin 2 law, in the event of serious and imminent danger or in the presence of a risk of irreversible damage, the alert could be made public directly. After the transposition of the Directive, the public disclosure of a report remains conditional on having first been reported through an internal or external reporting channel (see Directive 2019/1937, Art 15).
24 “Member States shall encourage reporting through internal reporting channels before reporting through external reporting channels, where the breach can be addressed effectively internally and where the reporting person considers that there is no risk of retaliation”: Directive 2019/1937 of 23 October 2019, Art 7.2.
25 See Culiberg and Mihelič, supra, note 17, 797. Authors suggest that intentions of lower-level employees to blow the whistle are higher when the reporting channel is administered externally than when it is administered internally (J Gao, R Greenberf and B Wong-On-Wing, “Whistleblowing Intentions of Lower-Level Employees: The Effect of Reporting Channel, Bystanders, and Wrongdoer Power Status” (2015) 126 Journal of Business Ethics 85). This effect is nevertheless disputed. Lobel maintains that, from a behavioural perspective, people ordinarily prefer to confront illegal activities within their organisation rather than stepping outside the organisation to report it (O Lobel, “Linking Prevention, Detection, and Whistleblowing: Principles for Designing Effective Reporting Systems” (2012) 54 South Texas Law Review 37, 42). Near and Miceli suggest that the greater the dependence of the organisation on the wrongdoing, the less likely that internal whistleblowing will be effective and the more likely that external whistleblowing will be effective (JP Near and MP Miceli, “Effective Whistle-Blowing” (1985) 20 Academy of Management Review 679, 697). Based on a study carried out in Germany, Kölbel and Herold state that the decision to report externally is strongly dependent on the failure of the initial internal report (R Kölbel and N Herold, “Whistle-Blowing from the Perspective of General Strain Theory” (2019) 40 Deviant Behavior 139).
26 Despite the opposition expressed by France during the legislative process (Abazi, supra, note 2, 649).
27 Near and Miceli, supra, note 25; TM Dworkin and MS Baucus, “Internal vs. External Whistleblowers: A Comparison of Whistleblowing Processes” (1998) 17 Journal of Business Ethics 1281; JR Mesmer-Magnus and C Viswesvaran, “Whistleblowing in Organizations: An Examination of Correlates of Whistleblowing Intentions, Actions, and Retaliation” (2005) 62 Journal of Business Ethics 277, 282.
28 On the support that non-governmental organisations provide to whistleblowers in various countries, see K Loyens and W Vandekerckhove, “Whistleblowing from an International Perspective: A Comparative Analysis of Institutional Arrangements” (2018) 8 Administrative Sciences 30.
29 Y Feldman and O Lobel, “The Incentives Matrix: The Comparative Effectiveness of Rewards, Liabilities, Duties, and Protections for Reporting Illegality” (2010) 88 Texas Law Review 1151; A Westbrook, “Cash for Your Conscience: Do Whistleblower Incentives Improve Enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act?” (2018) 75 Washington and Lee Law Review 1097; E Amir, A Lazar, and S Levi, “The Deterrent Effect of Whistleblowing on Tax Collections” (2018) 75 European Accounting Review 939; T Nyreröd and G Spagnolo, “Myths and Numbers on Whistleblower Rewards” (2021) 15 Regulation & Governance 82.
30 The 2017 Finance Act of 29 December 2016 (Art 109) allows the tax administration to compensate any person outside the public administration who has provided it with information leading to the discovery of certain tax offences. The amount of compensation awarded is decided by the tax administration after examination of the role of the informant and the fiscal interest of the information provided for the State. Significantly, the persons who communicate such information are not described by French law as whistleblowers (lanceurs d’alerte) but as “tax informants” (aviseurs fiscaux).
31 See D Lochak, “La dénonciation, stade suprême ou perversion de la démocratie?” in L’Etat de droit. Mélanges en l’honneur de Guy Braibant (Paris, Dalloz 1996) p 451.
32 Labour Code, Arts L. 4133-1 and L. 4133-2; Decree no. 2014-324 of 11 March 2014.
33 Agence nationale chargée de la sécurité sanitaire de l’alimentation, de l’environnement et du travail (ANSES).
34 Agence nationale de santé publique (Santé publique France); Haute Autorité de santé (HAS); Etablissement français du sang (EFS).
35 Comité d’indemnisation des victimes des essais nucléaires (CIVEN).
36 Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale (INSERM).
37 Inspection générale des affaires sociales (IGAS).
38 National Councils of the professional orders of several medical professions, including physicians, masseur-physiotherapists, midwives, pharmacists, nurses, dental surgeons, chiropodists and veterinarians.
39 See supra, note 14.
40 The decree of 3 October 2022 designates fifty-one external authorities in twenty-three categories (Public procurement; Financial services, products and markets and prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing; Product safety and conformity; Transport safety; Environmental protection; Radiation and nuclear safety; Food safety; Public health; Consumer protection; Protection of privacy and personal data, security of networks and information systems; Violations affecting the financial interests of the European Union; Violations relating to the internal market; Activities conducted by the Ministry of Defence; Public statistics; Agriculture; National education and higher education; Individual and collective labour relations and working conditions; Employment and vocational training; Culture; Rights and freedoms in relations with State administrations, regional and local authorities, public establishments and bodies entrusted with a public service mission; Best interests and rights of children; Discrimination; Ethics of persons engaged in security activities). Depending on the subject matter of the alert, the reporting person has to choose the most appropriate external reporting channel.
41 European Union, 7th Environment Action Programme (EAP), 2020.
42 France draws up a National Environmental Health Plan (PNSE) every five years, which is enshrined in the Public Health Code. The 4th National Environmental Health Plan covers the period 2021–2025.
43 Following the transposition of the Directive of 23 October 2019 into French law by the law of 21 March 2022, a bill has been tabled in Parliament for the creation of a Defender of the Environment: Proposition de loi constitutionnelle visant à créer un Défenseur de l’environnement, Assemblée nationale, no. 698, 13 December 2022. However, the political conditions for the bill, which comes from a minority parliamentary group, to be adopted have not yet been met.
44 Loyens and Vandekerckhove, supra, note 28, 41.
45 P Harremoës et al, Late Lessons from Early Warnings: The Precautionary Principle 1896–2000 (Copenhagen, European Environment Agency, 2001); P Dąbrowska-Kłosińska, “Electronic Systems of Information Exchange as a Key Tool in EU Health Crisis and Disaster Management” (2019) 10 European Journal of Risk Regulation 652; C Robinson et al, “Achieving a High Level of Protection from Pesticides in Europe: Problems with the Current Risk Assessment Procedure and Solutions” (2020) 11 European Journal of Risk Regulation 450.
46 V Abazi, “Truth Distancing? Whistleblowing as Remedy to Censorship during COVID-19” (2020) 11 European Journal of Risk Regulation 375.
47 AL Herbst, H Ulfelder and DC Poskanzer, “Adenocarcinoma of the Vagina – Association of Maternal Stilbestrol Therapy with Tumor Appearance in Young Women” (1971) 284 New England Journal of Medicine 878.