Whistleblowers working in the private or public sector who have acquired information concerning breaches in a work-related context (current, past or future employment relationship), such as:

• salaried workers (including civil servants and State employees);
• job candidates;
• persons whose work relationship has been terminated;
  
• persons who are self-employed;
• shareholders and members of an administrative, management or supervisory body of a company, including non-executive members;
• volunteers and paid or unpaid trainees;
• anyone working under the supervision and direction of contractors, subcontractors and suppliers.

The protection also extends to:

• facilitators (natural persons assisting whistleblowers on a confidential basis);
• colleagues or relatives of the whistleblower who could suffer retaliation;
• legal entities that the whistleblower owns, works for or is otherwise connected with in a work-related context;
• persons who have reported or disclosed information on breaches anonymously, but who are subsequently identified and suffer retaliation;
• persons reporting breaches to relevant institutions, bodies, offices or agencies of the EU.

What can be reported?

As a whistleblower, you can report any breach of national law and/or European Union law, that is to say, acts or omissions that:

• are unlawful; or
• defeat the object or the purpose of the directly applicable rules of national law or European law.

You can communicate any information, including reasonable suspicions, concerning:

• actual or potential breaches; and/or
• attempts to conceal such breaches,

which have occurred or are very likely to occur

• in the organisation in which you work or have worked; or
• with which you are or have been in contact through your work.

What are the conditions for protection?

To be protected against all forms of retaliation, you must:

• have had reasonable grounds to believe that the information on breaches reported was true at the time of reporting and that such information falls within the scope of the law; and
• have made a report:
  • either internally: through the reporting channels of your company or administration;
  • or externally: through the reporting channels of the competent authority;
  • or by way of public disclosure: following external reporting that yielded no satisfactory result.

Submission of an internal report to the ministry

If, as a whistleblower, you wish to report breaches to the Ministry, you can contact them in Luxembourgish, French, German or English:

• via the 'Whistleblower' procedure without authentication on the secure MyGuichet.lu platform; or
• by email to: signalement@ma.etat.lu, or
• by post (not recommended):

Ministère de l’Agriculture, de l’Alimentation et de la Viticulture
1, rue de la Congrégation
L-1352 Luxembourg

The ministry's reporting channel guarantees the completeness, integrity and confidentiality of the information transmitted. The information transmitted in this way is accessible only to certain authorised staff, who are bound by professional secrecy.

Any processing of personal data carried out under the law of 16 May 2023 is carried out in accordance with Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC.

As a public authority processing personal data, the ministry is bound to respect the obligations incumbent on it in its capacity as a data controller.

If you have any questions regarding the processing of your personal data by the Ministry, you may contact the Ministry's DPO by email at: dpo@ma.etat.lu.

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