ETHICS TRAINING MUST BE MADE MANDATORY IN THE EU

Voters’ satisfaction and trust in political administrations has declined substantially due to politicians’ irresponsiveness, misconduct, and lack of accountability. Voters increasingly feel that their role and power to influence the political decision-making process has been diminished and, as a result, they have lost confidence in governments. Furthermore, voters have come to believe that politicians are more motivated by personal power than civic impact. These negative attitudes have been reinforced in countries around the world by the discovery of corruption scandals and other forms of misconduct. The establishment of ethics regimes and the adoption of government ethics rules are intended to reconstruct voters’ trust and confidence in the functioning of political systems.

The fact that political parties and politicians are perceived to discount voters’ demands not only attests to low political efficacy and limited responsiveness by the system, but it also provides a compelling explanation for the emergence of protest politics. Protest politics has manifested in many different forms, for example, leading the emergence of protest parties-challenging the system parties, diminishing levels of political participation, the creation of new forms of political participation, and above all else, leading to lower voter turnout during election cycles.

Ethics training is a useful tool for strengthening ethics and preventing corruption in public administration if applied together with other tools as part of a comprehensive anti-corruption and pro-integrity policy. Ethics training alone cannot produce sustainable results, especially in countries with high levels of corruption. The creation of ethics regimes requires both an internal and an external strategy. The external strategy requires parliaments to publicize their rules to show not only that they are genuinely committed to creating and enforcing an ethics regime, but also to clarify to the voters what behaviour is appropriate and should not be criticized, and to explain what behaviour is inappropriate and deserving of criticism and punishment. The internal strategy requires parliaments to take several steps to prevent various forms of parliamentary misconduct from occurring, to punish clear instances of misconduct, and to create guidelines that are intended to improve the behaviour of parliamentarians and government officials.

Political support for ethics training should be demonstrated not only through declarations but also through the practical actions of the leadership, e.g. by setting an example of ethical behaviour and by allocating funds and staff for the implementation of the ethics training programmes. Lack of such "leadership from above" undermines motivation for participation in ethics training and thwarts their positive impact on the behaviour of civil servants.

Ethics training should be a part of a broader and comprehensive public policy on anti-corruption/integrity and public administration reform, and should be reflected in programmatic documents. However, a requirement to provide ethics training established in policy and programmatic documents alone may not be sufficient to ensure its practical implementation. It is important to have a legislative or other official requirement to deliver and receive integrity training for public officials established in, for example, a Law on Civil Service, an Anti-Corruption Programme, a Code of Ethics and other appropriate regulations.

It is important that there is at least one public agency responsible for the overall framework for ethics training, for central planning, coordination and evaluation of results. Civil service, anti-corruption or ethics agencies can play this role; clear formulation of responsibilities of these institutions should be complemented with proper coordination among them, as well as with other institutions that provide ethics training at central and local levels. In addition, ethics should be integrated in the everyday management of public institutions and managers of public institutions should be required to promote ethics in their institutions.

When there is a limited budget for training programmes, it is important to prioritise the target groups. Targeting also helps to make the training more focused on the practical needs of a specific group of public officials, thus increasing their motivation in participating. Several groups should be targeted for ethics training: all new public officials should be provided with ethics training; senior public officials in management positions and public officials in areas of risk should also be trained on ethics. Compulsory programmes for these target groups are advisable. It is also important to develop ethics training programmes for political/elected public officials. Finally, ethics/HR officers in sector ministries and local level governments should also be trained for their important role in the dissemination of the integrity policy in the organisation.