Acknowledgement of receipt: seven days

Under Directive (EU) 2019/1937, receipt of an internal report should generally be acknowledged within seven days, unless the reporting person expressly requests otherwise or the organisation reasonably believes that acknowledging receipt would jeopardise protection of the person's identity.

Feedback: three months

The reasonable timeframe for feedback should not exceed three months from acknowledgement of receipt or, if no acknowledgement was sent, three months from the expiry of the seven-day period after the report was made. In practice, the organisation must know when the case entered the system, who owns it and what action has been taken or is envisaged.

Three months does not necessarily mean “case closed”

The deadline concerns feedback on follow-up. An investigation may continue depending on complexity, third parties and other proceedings.

Internal deadlines

In addition to statutory deadlines, the organisation should define internal timeframes for triage, assignment, contact, evidence gathering, review and decisions. These deadlines help prevent cases from remaining idle until the legal limit approaches.

How technology can support control

  • Automatically record the case creation date.
  • Assign an owner, priority and status.
  • Set deadlines for internal transitions.
  • Generate alerts before a deadline is missed.
  • Record messages, decisions and changes in the history.

UNOVOX supports configurable deadlines and operational indicators. The configuration should reflect the procedure approved by the organisation and the national law applicable to it.

Official source: Directive (EU) 2019/1937 — EUR-Lex. National transposition law must be checked for the country concerned. This content does not replace legal advice.