New revelations shake Facebook. The social network is notably accused by a whistleblower, Frances Haugen, former engineer at Facebook. According to her, the American giant would broadcast fake news on its pages to enrich yourself. How are whistleblowers protected in France? What are their rights?
Pierre Farge is a lawyer and author of The whistleblower is not an informer, published this year by Jean Claude Lattes editions. In this book, he stresses that French law does not sufficiently protect whistleblowers.
franceinfo: How do you define a whistleblower, what is its legal definition?
Pierre Farge: The whistleblower was first defined in the Sapin 2 law of 2018, in its article 6: it is a person who alerts in good faith, in the general interest and in a disinterested manner.
Can you lose your job or do you risk legal action for having launched an alert?
Sure. These are all the drawbacks and dangers of warning. There are what are called gagging procedures. You can lose your job, which means you have to enter a Consulting tribunals to denounce the unfair dismissal, but we may also be the subject of other gagging procedures, such as procedures in violation of the confidentiality of the contract, or defamation procedures, in criminal press law.
And yet the law is supposed to protect him …
This law is about posting, that is to say that it is certainly a step forward because we define for the first time what a whistleblower is, it helps to explain that the whistleblowers are going in the direction of history, but when you are a lawyer and you seek to apply this law in the interest of your clients, it is absolutely unenforceable.
Is it because before giving the alert, you must first talk to your employer?
The law provides for three levels, and in particular this first level which obliges the employee to report to his employer the facts of which he became aware in the performance of his duties. This device was dangerous and it took three years to be corrected.
The European directive, which we must transpose before mid-December has forced this first level to be withdrawn, at least now, the whistleblower has the choice of directly entering the judicial authority or denouncing the facts to his employer. We give him the choice. The employer could immediately take all repressive measures to silence his whistleblower, starting with dismissal or criminal prosecution for defamation.
Do other countries protect whistleblowers better than us?
The United States is 20 years ahead of whistleblower protection. We are inspired by it elsewhere. There is a whole compensation mechanism, deadlines which are much faster than in France, the law is much clearer.