Whistleblowing is a relatively new concept, with the term only being popularised in the 1970s. Until recently, protection for whistleblowers remained fragmented, precarious, and unequal across countries and economic sectors. In 2016, the French Parliament first defined a whistleblower in legislation. Later, in 2019, the Whistleblower Protection Directive was passed by the EU Institutions and has been largely hailed as a global standard setter in this field. In her address to the IIEA, Maureen Kearney discusses her experiences as a whistleblower, the current state of whistleblower protection in France and the EU, the role of trade unions in whistleblowing procedures, and areas where whistleblower protection can be improved.

About the Speaker:

A native of Castlebar, Maureen Kearney moved to Paris in the mid-1980s to work as a teacher in the nuclear industry for a subsidiary of what would later become Areva. She joined the trade union, Confédération française démocratique du travail (CFDT), in the 1990s after seeing her students threatened with redundancy and progressively became a leading trade union activist within the company. In 2004, she was unanimously elected General Secretary of the Areva European Works Council by trade unionists across 14 countries. In 2012, she gained notoriety for blowing the whistle on Areva's planned technology transfers to China. Her experiences as a whistleblower were subsequently documented in a book and film, both called La Syndicaliste (released in English as The Sitting Duck), released in 2019 and 2023, respectively.