The two-part legislative package aimed to reduce the risk for people who point out grievances in their company or authority. This is intended to implement an EU directive; Germany is already significantly behind schedule here.
The Bundestag had already passed a corresponding draft law, but this failed in February in the Bundesrat. Above all, countries with CDU/CSU government participation reported reservations. Among other things, they asserted that the draft would cause high costs and a lot of bureaucracy, especially for smaller companies. After the Bundesrat stopped the law, however, neither the chamber of the federal states nor the Bundestag nor the federal government called the mediation committee.
Instead, the traffic light coalition split the law into two parts. In their opinion, the main law no longer required the approval of the Bundesrat. Accordingly, only the supplementary law, which was intended to make the regulations applicable to state and local authorities, would have required approval. In the talks that have now been announced, however, the division into two laws could be reversed.
The SPD legal expert Sebastian Fiedler sharply criticized the Union. "You get the impression that dubious advantages for small and medium-sized companies are more important to the Union than effective detection of the most serious crimes," he said after the item on the agenda was dropped in the Bundestag.
"In the parliamentary procedure, we are therefore calling on the Union again to work with us to do more to protect whistleblowers in order to effectively prevent crime," explained Fiedler. "We expect that the CDU/CSU will finally be aware of their responsibility in the coming talks."
However, the Union faction does not want to know anything about negotiations only within the Bundestag. "The 'traffic light' must finally take the legitimate concerns of the states seriously and take the path that the Basic Law provides for disagreements between the federal and state governments: it must call the mediation committee," explained right-wing politician Günter Krings (CDU). The coalition wants to tactic "endlessly" - "but the time for tricks is over now".
