Brussels, 9 January 2023
The European Commission has extended the scope of its anonymous antitrust whistleblower tool to include mergers and State Aid issues. As a result of this extension, individuals will now be able to alert the Commission about all types of possible breaches of EU competition rules while maintaining their anonymity.
The whistleblower tool was introduced in 2017 to allow any person to anonymously report to the Commission cartels and other antitrust violations such as price coordination, agreements on procurement bids and unfair exclusion of rivals. Citizens can now also blow the whistle and help the Commission uncover merger-related infringements such as gun jumping as well as instances of unlawful State aid.
Since it was launched, the tool has served to detect unlawful practices more quickly and contributed to the success of the Commission’s competition investigations, with a steady stream of around 100 messages per year sent via the tool. The decision to expand the scope of the whistleblower tool offers synergies across all areas of EU competition law.
The Commission encourages individuals with such inside knowledge to reach out by sending an anonymous message here.
This tool is conceived to preserve the anonymity of informants who have reasons to believe that their reporting may lead to retaliation against them in any form. The Commission uses a specifically designed encrypted messaging system that allows two-way communications, enabling the whistleblower to provide information and the Commission to ask for further clarifications. The service is run by a specialised external service provider, which acts as an intermediary and relays only the content of received messages without forwarding any metadata that could be used to identify the individual providing the information.
More information can be found in the Commission’s whistleblower communication tools’ website.
Source – EU Commission