Compliance - Whistleblower

For our corporate group we have set up a centralized system for reporting infringement of Union law.
You can decide whether and which of your contact details you provide and whether you wish to get feedback. If you choose to get feedback and provide contact information, you will receive an acknowledgement of receipt of your notice within 7 days via the communication channel you provided. Within 3 months, you will receive information about how your tip was handled and any measures taken.

Your notification goes directly to our external ombudsman office, which treats it confidentially and, after an initial review, forwards it to our internal compliance office (Head of Legal) for further action.

You can submit notifications of legal infringement or abusive behavior, particularly in the following areas:

• Public procurement
• Financial services, financial products and financial markets, as well as prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing,
• Product safety and compliance
• Transport safety
• Environmental protection
• Animal health and public health
• Consumer protection
• Protection of privacy and personal data as well as security of network and information systems
• Infringements of the Union's financial interests within the meaning of Art. 325 TFEU and as further defined in relevant Union measures
• Infringements of internal market rules within the meaning of Article 26(2) TFEU, including infringements of Union rules on competition and State aid, as well as infringements of internal market rules in relation to acts which breach corporate tax rules or in relation to agreements aimed at obtaining a tax advantage contrary to the object or purpose of the applicable corporate tax law.

Notifications on areas other than those mentioned above, such as unethical or immoral behavior e.g. mobbing, will generally not be processed and will be deleted immediately. In this case, you will not receive an acknowledgement of receipt.
Notifications on other, non-listed areas will also be processed. The same and aforementioned requirements apply here.

We guarantee any whistleblower who reports information about potential violations of laws, regulations or internal policies to us that he or she does not have to fear retaliation or negative consequences from the company. We will treat all reports from whistleblowers confidentially and will not pass on any personal data without consent. Should retaliation nevertheless occur, we will consider this to be a serious breach of our policy and will take appropriate measures to protect the whistleblower and remedy the breach.