The Universitat de València, through the Vice-Rectorate for Territorial Projection and Society, in collaboration with the Valencian Anti-Fraud Agency, the City Council of Torrent and the Faculty of Law, join forces to organise the joint conference, entitled "Protection of whistleblowers".

The conference will reflect on the value and consequences of the European Directive 2019/1937 on the protection of persons who report breaches of Union law, also known as the Whistleblowers Directive.

The Network of Anti-Fraud Offices and Agencies of Spain, in its VIII working meeting on 29 September 2021 in Alicante, approved an institutional declaration in which the competent institutions of the Spanish State are urged to transpose the directive into their own legal system.

This declaration recommends governments, administrations and citizens, in general, to foster a culture of reporting fraudulent and corrupt practices; to promote alert channels; to recognise the exemplary nature of whistleblowers; to guarantee confidentiality; to protect them; to provide whistleblowers and alerters with support measures, as well as to deploy dissemination, training and awareness-raising actions on the culture of public integrity.

Academic and social discussion on these issues is essential to improve the ways of preventing and combating corruption and fraud in the management of public affairs, as well as basic debates to strengthen civic education and collective public ethics.