[O]n Tuesday (17 April) [t]he parliament backed rules to boost the fight against fraud, corruption, corporate tax avoidance and damage to people’s health and the environment.

Recent corporate scandals “have helped to shine a light on the great precariousness that whistle-blowers suffer today,” said Virginie Roziere, the French socialist who steered the legislation through the assembly...

The new rules — proposed by the executive European Commission a year ago — must still be formally approved by EU countries that have already shown support for them.

Once approved, member states will have two years to comply with the rules.

The parliament said the rules offer the first EU-wide protection for whistleblowers...

The rules aim to both protect and encourage reporting of breaches of EU law...

The EU Commission said whistleblowers have already played an important role in the Dieselgate scandal, where Volkswagen was discovered to have used devices to hide diesel emissions.

It also recalled how they helped expose the scandal at Cambridge Analytica, the now defunct British data consultancy accused of having harvested the data of millions of Facebook users without their permission.

MEP Roziere also highlighted other scandals, like LuxLeaks and the Panama Papers, which have exposed tax evasion by multinationals.