The European Parliament passed new rules this Tuesday in Brussels aimed at strengthening legal protections for whistleblowers throughout the EU. The legal directive requires companies with over 50 employees throughout the EU to provide internal reporting channels for employees providing confidential evidence of legal violations such as tax fraud, money laundering, or data breaches. More than 250,000 companies will be affected by this mandate in the future.

As a provider of digital whistleblowing systems, EQS Group benefits from the Brussels decision. EQS Group began expanding its Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC) business in Fall 2017, subsequently acquiring the Swiss company Integrity Line. Integrity Line is a leading digital whistleblower system used worldwide by over 150 companies who employ between 50 to 200,000 people. Small companies pay EUR 2,000 a year for the secure whistleblower channel while larger corporations with individual requirements pay tens of thousands of Euros. EQS Integrity Line already meets every requirement of the new EU directive.

Achim Weick, founder and CEO of EQS Group, welcomes today's decision: "The new EU directive confirms our assessment that the need for secure whistleblower systems and other digital compliance solutions will continue to increase. They are indispensable walls of defense for companies to efficiently minimize risks and avoid costly damage to reputation."

Although EU member states have yet to convert the new whistleblower protections into national law, Weick has a clear recommendation: "Companies should prepare early in order to protect themselves, as was not the case with GDPR."

At , EQS Group provides information on the new regulations, offering companies a self-test and recommended actions.

About EQS Group:

EQS Group is a leading international technology provider for Corporate Compliance and Investor Relations. Several thousand companies worldwide use EQS Group's offerings to fulfill complex national and international disclosure obligations, to minimize risk, and to reach stakeholders.

EQS Group is a digital single-source provider for global teams. EQS Group's products and services include a global newswire, regulatory news distribution, investor targeting and contact management, and insider list management. These are integrated within a cloud-based platform, the EQS COCKPIT, to streamline the workflows of Investor Relations, Communications, and Compliance professionals. The Group also offers an innovative whistleblowing and case management software, website services, digital reports, and webcasting solutions.

EQS Group was founded in 2000 in Munich, Germany. Today, the group employs over 450 professionals around the globe and has offices in the world's key financial markets.

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André Marques
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