Within how many days must I acknowledge a report?

Seven days for acknowledgement of receipt

A report must be acknowledged within seven days of receipt. This applies to employers in both the Netherlands and Germany, and the deadline is literally the same in both countries: seven days, calculated from the moment the report is received — not from when someone reads it or picks it up.

These seven days are not a non-binding guideline but a fixed deadline under the law, and they immediately mark the starting point for the next, longer deadline: the three months within which the reporter receives information about what happens with their report. These three months run from the sending of the acknowledgement of receipt, not from the report itself. If someone fails to send the acknowledgement, they also push back the later deadline — but the seven days themselves remain firm. For organisations that do not fall under the legal obligation (below the threshold of fifty employees, and outside the sectors for which the obligation applies anyway), this deadline is not a legal requirement, but in practice it is often still observed because it has become the standard.

Legal basis: Article 9 of the EU Directive

The seven days derive from Article 9 of Directive (EU) 2019/1937, which sets the framework for internal reporting procedures. The Netherlands has adopted this deadline in Article 2, paragraph 2, point (h) of the Whistleblowers Protection Act, and Germany in § 17, paragraph 1, number 2 of the Hinweisgeberschutzgesetz. All three texts contain the same sequence: first the acknowledgement of receipt within seven days, then the substantive assessment about which the reporter is informed within three months of that acknowledgement. The fact that the European directive and the two national laws use literally the same deadline here is no accident — the directive made this deadline mandatory, and both Member States adopted it without deviation.