Unlawful incidences in life occur in real time. In turn, it is beneficial for a company to learn of it in real time. Learning of the unlawful incidence enables the company to more adequately address the incidence, resolve it, and cope with any damage to the company's character and any possible damaging monetary consequence. The European Union ("EU") has implemented a "Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union" in which it identifies that "[e]veryone has the right to the protection of personal data concerning him or her" and that "[s]uch data must be processed fairly for specified purposes and on the basis of the consent of the person concerned or some other legitimate basis laid down by law ("CURIA - Documents")." Likewise, this reinforces Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 1995 on the safeguarding a person's rights in handling personal data and the unrestricted movement of that data ("Document 31995L0046"). .
One step a company can take to increase the likelihood that its hotline reporting system remains in compliance with EU data protection laws is to adapt the hotline to conform to each European nation's data privacy laws. The EU data Directive proposes an outline for data privacy laws across Europe, but it only provides is only the outline and not a means of ensuring compliance. For example, if there is a specific data privacy concern in France, then French laws would determine data privacy rights and obligations ("EU Directive 95-46-EC - Chapter 1 - Data Protection Commissioner - Ireland"). What this means is that the Directive only applies to the 28 nations who are members of the EU (e.g. Austria, Beglium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France et al) ("EU member countries"). The Directive doesn't provide any injunction of the rights individual European persons or firms.
Likewise, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has suggested creating an audit committee "to receive and review all data gathered through the hotlines and is entitled to hire an outside adviser to review the data ("Uncertainty Persists for Overseas Hotlines").
