Controversy in the EU: Why the Federal Government does not want better whistleblower protection

Whistleblowers do not have it easy in Germany. Although scandals are often only known thanks to courageous insiders, they often have to fear for their economic existence - many even face criminal consequences.

Since 2008, there have been six legislative initiatives in Germany to protect whistleblowers - all failed. Whistleblowers also play no role in the current coalition agreement between the Union and the SPD.

For almost a year now the European Union is putting pressure.

In April 2018, the EU Commission presented a proposal to better protect whistleblowers. The Federal Government has joined the draft directive, but now rejects a broader proposal from the European Parliament. Responsible for Germany is the Ministry of Justice of Katarina Barley (SPD)

That's the point: The dispute with the European Parliament ignites the so-called three - stage notification procedure :

• According to this, whistleblowers should first use company-internal channels for their complaints.
• If this fails for three months, they should be allowed to turn to authorities such as the prosecutor .
• And only if this does not lead to a result should they be allowed to turn to the public .

Germany, France and three other states make this three-stage procedure a condition for their approval. The European Parliament wants to leave it to whistleblowers, on the other hand, to report abuses.

"The Minister of Justice blocks effective protection for whistleblowers in Europe," says Green MEP Sven Giegold. "The internal reporting channels of a company or authority can be a risk for whistleblowers in detecting maladministration."

As Annegret Falter, chairwoman of the whistleblower network, argues, has also been campaigning for the protection of whistleblowers since 2006: "Employees who complain internally face the threat of bullying and, in the worst case, the dismissal or to report to an internal audit office has a huge intimidating effect. "

There is also criticism in the EU Parliament that whistleblower protection should only be effective when it comes to violating European laws. This would be anything that harms the public interest, strictly speaking, but not yet illegal or is in a gray area, outside - about questionable tax tricks with which companies or individuals expect their tax burden down. "Such behavior may be immoral," says a Commission spokeswoman, "but in a directive we can only refer to the legal situation."

Maladministration by individuals is completely disregarded in the Commission's draft. It should apply only to companies with at least 50 employees and an annual turnover of more than ten million euros. And there is also an upper limit for public authorities: all communities with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants are to be excluded from whistleblower protection.

Commission wants to prevent "malicious whistleblowing"

The Federal Government defends its actions. "We need a European solution," says a spokesman for the Ministry of Justice. "We welcome the Commission's position and have agreed to act in the Council of Ministers." A spokeswoman for Economics Minister Peter Altmaier (CDU) states: "We support a regulation that must protect informants well and give companies legal certainty."

Coalition circles claim that the Union rejects further protection for whistleblowers. Thus Altmaier and Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU) would have demanded even tougher restrictions of the directive. This prevented the Ministry of Justice.

The European Commission also defends the three-stage procedure. It wanted to prevent "malicious whistleblowing" and prevent public misdemeanors. "If someone has malicious intentions, he can do great damage," says a spokeswoman.

Annegret Falter of the whistleblower network holds this argument forward: "Empirical data show that 80 to 95 percent of whistleblowers report in-house anyway, it's the remaining five to 20 percent, some of which are highly criminal affairs just belong to the public. "

How does the Civey method work?

The opinion research institute Civey works with a multi-level fully automated procedure. All representative real-time surveys are played in a Germany-wide network of more than 20,000 websites ("Riversampling"), so it is not only users of SPIEGEL ONLINE interviewed. Anyone can participate in the surveys online and will be included in the representative result with their answers if they have registered. From these users, Civey draws a quoted sample that ensures that it matches the population, for example, in terms of age, gender and population density. Finally, in a third step, the results are weighted by other attendees' socio-demographic factors and attitudes to correct distortions and prevent manipulation. More information can be found in the Civey FAQ.

Why is a registration necessary?

The registration helps to weigh the answers, thus allowing a result for the surveys, which is representative of the voting population in Germany. Each participant is asked for their gender, year of birth and place of residence. After that everyone can give their opinion in further surveys on different topics.

How do the results become representative?

The answer of each participant is weighted so that the result of a survey is representative of the population. For the Sunday question and the government monitor, this population comprises the population entitled to vote in Germany. The weighting is done fully automatically on the basis of the personal details at the registration as well as the history of previous answers of a user. More methodological details can be found in the Civey whitepaper.

Will you reach enough participants online?

Opinion polls are usually conducted by phone or online. The significance of the results depends on how many people can be reached and how many actually participate in a survey when they are approached. Internet connections and fixed-line connections are currently about equally widespread in Germany - with around 90 percent of households each, mobile phones even as high as 95 percent. The willingness to participate in all methods in the single-digit percentage range, especially experts estimate it for telephone surveys.
Thus, in both methods there is a group of people that can not be reached because they either have no connection to the respective network or do not want to participate in the survey. Therefore, a significant number of people must always be approached for a meaningful result. Civey surveys are currently in addition to SPIEGEL ONLINE in more than 20,000 other websites involved, including various media. This ensures that as many populations as possible can be reached.

How do I recognize the quality of a result?

Until the result of a survey becomes representative, enough different people have to participate. Whether this is already successful, makes Civey transparent, in that for each survey result a statistical error probability is specified. The number of participants and the interview time are also published for each survey.

What does it mean when the colored areas in the graphics overlap?

In our graphs, the statistical error is shown as a colored interval. This interval shows the uncertainty associated with a survey score. For example, on the Sunday question, one can not say exactly how many percent a party would get in a poll, but specify an interval in which the outcome is likely to be. If the intervals of two survey values ​​overlap, then strictly speaking no statements about the difference can be made. For the Sunday question this means: If the poll numbers of two parties are so close together that overlap their error intervals, it can not be derived from which would currently perform better in the election.

What happens with my data?

The personal data of the users are stored encrypted on German servers and remain secret. Civey employees use only user IDs for reporting and can not associate users with their votes. The main purpose of the users' personal information is to weigh the answers and to ensure that the surveys are not manipulated. To prevent this, Civey uses both statistical and technical methods. In addition, Civey works with external partners who create audiences. Only when users have accepted the privacy policy of both Civey and an external partner, may your responses be used by the Partner to model those audiences. However, a partner does not receive information about your political and religious attitudes as well as those with which you can be identified. Civey users are also not ads based on their answers. You may object to the distribution to partners at any time here as a logged in user. More information about privacy at Civey can be found here.

Who is behind Civey?

At this point, readers in the app and on the mobile / stationary website have the opportunity to participate in a representative Civey survey. Civey is an online opinion research institute based in Berlin. The start-up cooperates with different partners, including SPIEGEL ONLINE as well as the "Tagesspiegel", "Cicero", the "Freitag" and Change.org. Civey is funded by the ProFit funding program of Investitionsbank Berlin and the European Regional Development Fund .