News on whistleblowing and collective bargaining

Amendment to the provisions of Law no. 361/2022 on the protection of whistleblowers in the public interest On 31 March 2023, Law No. 67/2023 on the amendment of art. 6 para. (2) of Law No. 361/2022 on the protection of whistleblowers in the public interest will come into force. According to the amendment, anonymous reports will be examined and resolved to the extent that they contain indications of violations of the law. The requirement that the indications must be "well-founded" has been removed from the text of the legal provision in order to eliminate the risk of subjective examination of anonymous reports. We would remind that Law No. 361/2022 was adopted in order to harmonise the national legislation with European legislation, i.e. to transpose 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. This is one of the milestones of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP). The new procedure for allocating a company to a collective bargaining sector On 29 March 2023, the Order of the Minister of Labour and Social Solidarity No. 798/2023 on the approval of the procedure for allocating the units defined according to Article 1, point 21 of Law No 367/2022 on social dialogue to collective bargaining sectors entered into force. According to this procedure, the application for allocation to one of the collective bargaining sectors (the model of which can be found in Annex No. 1 to the procedure) is submitted to the Ministry of Labour and Social Solidarity in written form or by e-mail. It must be accompanied by a series of documents which essentially refer to the activity carried out by the company and the capacity/authorisation of the signatory of the application to represent the employer in this matter. The allocation to the collective bargaining sector shall be granted for the period of validity of the collective bargaining agreement, i.e. from the date of registration of the application, and shall be extended automatically unless the employer concerned makes another application.