site.btaWhistleblower Protection Act Revisions Passed Conclusively

Bulgaria's Parliament on Thursday passed conclusively a Government-proposed Bill to Amend and Supplement the Act on Protection of Persons Submitting Alerts or Publicly Disclosing Information about Violations.

The revised version limits the exclusion from protection under the Act to the confidentiality of communications between lawyers and their clients ('legal professional privilege'). Lawyers, notaries, enforcement agents and jurisconsults, who must comply with the duty of professional secrecy, will thus be protected when submitting alerts about violations of Bulgarian or EU law that threaten or harm the public interest.

According to another enacted amendment, in addition to factory and office workers, service providers, too, will be able to benefit from the provisions of the law.

As an alternative to documenting oral reports in a transcript, they can now be archived by making a recording in a durable and retrievable form.

The revisions provide for the election by the Municipal Council, from among its members, of a standing ethics committee to deal with alerts about unethical conduct. Any alerts about corruption of a conflict of interest of municipal councillors will not be addressed by the local ethics committees but will be forwarded to the competent authorities.

Justice Minister Georgi Georgiev explained that the adopted amendments by no means affect the attorney-client privilege but clearly differentiate the professions which are entitled to protection under the law and those that fall outside its scope precisely with regard to their duty of professional secrecy under special legislation. "The attorney-client privilege by virtue of The Bar Act extends to legal assistants who, owing to the senior lawyer's acts or omissions, have breached this privilege, which is why the protection regime is unchanged," he pointed out. 

In his words, the bill seeks to enhance the legal framework in terms of improving the protection of persons who have submitted an alert against their superior and thus incur demotion, dismissal, or transfer to a different job. The revision requires that the information obtained under an employment relationship be acquired in a work-related context within whose framework the employee has heard about the violation concerned and has then reported it, Georgiev added.

He emphasized that the passage of the bill is yet another step towards unblocking EUR 653 million of the second payment under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan. Along with that, the legislation meets requirements for Bulgaria's accession to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the Justice Minister pointed out.