Debate during the plenary session of July in Strasbourg on the protection of whistle-blowers.&nbsp;Statements of &nbsp;Ivan KORCOK, EU Council - Slovak presidency, Jyrki KATAINEN, Vice-President of the EC in charge of Jobs, Growth, Investment and Competitiveness,&nbsp;&nbsp;Julia PITERA (EPP, PL),&nbsp;Evelyn REGNER (S&amp;D, AT),&nbsp;Monica MACOVEI (ECR, RO) and&nbsp;Maite PAGAZAURTUND&Uacute;A RUIZ (ALDE, ES)

Strasbourg

debate

plenary session

KATAINEN, Jyrki (FI, EC)

PAGAZAURTUNDÚA, Maite (Renew, ES)

MACOVEI, Monica (ECR, RO)

REGNER, Evelyn (S&D, AT)

protection of whistleblowers (T)

PITERA, Julia (EPP, PL)

KORCOK, Ivan (SK)

Protection of whistle-blowers: extracts from the debate

SOUNDBITE (English), Ivan KORCOK, EU Council - Slovak presidency, When acting for the purpose of protecting general public interest whistle-blowers play an important role for disclosing wrong doing and dangers to society, and therefore they deserve legal protection. It is crucial that they can signal and sound an alert without having to pay for it with their job, their reputation and even their lives.

SOUNDBITE (English), Jyrki KATAINEN, Vice-President of the EC in charge of Jobs, Growth, Investment and Competitiveness, The Commission has taken steps to protect whistle-blowers in EU sectorial legislation as well as measures within the EU institutions in guidelines on whistle-blowers adopted on 6 December 2012. For example member states are quite establishing effective and reliable mechanisms to encourage the reporting to competent authorities, potential and actual breaches of anti-money laundering rules.

SOUNDBITE (Polish), Julia PITERA (EPP, PL), The UN Convention against corruption ratified by all EU member states , contains Art 33 on the protection of reporting persons , calls up on member states to create legal system to guarantee reporting persons , people reporting corruption, from negative consequences.

SOUNDBITE (German), Evelyn REGNER (S&amp;D, AT), We need a horizontal directive a general directive which really generally protects whistle-blowers not just sectorial protection. This is a question of political will, is not a question of legal bases. If you look at this you will see that there is legal base, and if the Commission in prepared to go further than what they are doing at the moment, it is absolutely possible.

SOUNDBITE (Romanian), Monica MACOVEI (ECR, RO), We need courageous people, with conscience, with dignity, who work on these European and National institutions, and who reveal the illegalities committed within these institutions. They are not whistle-blowers, they are not traitors, and they defend a public interest in order to prevent theft, corruption and so on, against everything that can happen in European, National or private institutions.

SOUNDBITE (Spanish), Maite PAGAZAURTUND&#218;A RUIZ (ALDE, ES), When I hear the various directive legislations and everything you are telling us about with regard to this issue, is like 'Alice in wonderland' chasing after the rabbit, a rabbit that we can never catch , because the major criminals seem to be a step ahead of us. There is 2014 directive with regard to transparency and the issue of San Marino, Monaco, etc, Panama wasn't even there at the time. We have to look to these cases, it was an anonymous source that provide us with information about that particular companies in Panama and there have been very serious consequences as a result.