The European Central Bank is to review its whistleblowing policy later this year to bring it up to "state of the art" modern standards - after a query from a European politician revealed the body hasn't updated its approach in more than a decade.

The German Green MEP Sven Giegold, a member of the European Parliament's Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs and well-known as an effective thorn in the EU financial authorities' side, asked ECB supervisory board chairman Danièle Nouy  during a hearing on June 19 about the bank's whistleblowing process and whether it had a procedure in place allowing accusations to be made anonymously.