must foreign employees be able to report in their own language

Offering a reporting channel in multiple languages is not a legal requirement, but it is practically recommended

The law does not prescribe in which language or languages a reporting channel must be offered. Article 9 of Directive (EU) 2019/1937 does require that workers receive clear and accessible information about the reporting procedure, and article 2 of the Whistleblower Protection Act stipulates that the internal procedure must be available in writing or electronically. The law does not translate "accessible" into a specific language requirement, but in a team with many non-Dutch-speaking workers, the question naturally arises whether the information is practically understandable for everyone who needs to be able to use it.

For organisations with an internationally composed workforce, it is therefore common practice to offer the reporting page and the accompanying explanation in more than one language, even if this is not formulated as a separate legal obligation. How this is implemented — a fixed set of languages, or the possibility for the reporter to choose their own language — is up to the employer. This aligns with the broader question how do I inform workers about the reporting channel, in which language and accessibility of information are a recurring point. When drawing up the procedure itself, as described under what must be included in a whistleblower policy, the target group of workers is the starting point for the form that is chosen.

What Article 9 and Article 2 do and do not regulate

Article 9 of Directive (EU) 2019/1937 requires clear and accessible information about the procedure, and article 7 of the same directive regulates the setup of internal reporting channels in general terms; neither provision mentions a language requirement. Article 2 of the Whistleblower Protection Act repeats the requirement that the procedure is documented in writing or electronically, without prescribing a specific language. The choice for multilingual reporting therefore does not follow directly from a statutory provision, but from the way an organisation itself ensures accessibility.