THE FIGHT AGAINST CORRUPTION IN THE EU: TI ROADMAP

Key issues for EU action (2015-2019)

To follow-up on previous political commitments and recommendations made by different EU institutions and to prompt effective change in practice, TI-EU recommends that the EU ensures now that anti-corruption legislation and ongoing legislative proposals are implemented and enforced across the board in the 28 EU Member States.

Further, TI considers the following areas of concern to call for further action, in which:

• the European Council should adopt strategic guidelines to set the EU’s long-term, future objectives in the area of Freedom, Security and Justice, and more specifically with a view to anti-corruption measures;
• the European Commission should develop and adopt a new multi-annual programme defining concrete anti-corruption actions to achieve these objectives until 2019;
•  EU Member States should demonstrate political will in the Council and at home.

 The Union, including the member state level, needs to move forward especially with regard to the following areas:

 No impunity for the corrupt in the EU:

• Effective prosecution of corruption cases, including those with a cross-border dimension, by an enhanced police and law enforcement cooperation and coordinated investigation and prosecution effort through a newly established and robust European Public Prosecution Office;
• More efficient information sharing between investigative and prosecution pools across Europe (letter rogatory or formal requests of judicial assistance in practice and procedure);
• Standardised set of indicators to measure and compare performance of preventive and repressive anti-corruption bodies across Europe to inform the policy debate through hard data;
• Enhance national judicial procedures through the gathering of comparable data on court appeals as well as libel and defamation practice and procedure;
• Improved and consistent enforcement of anti-bribery legislation;
• Protection of whistleblowers who make corruption known to the authorities or, where no alternatives exist, to the public.

 Joint anti-corruption efforts between the EU and Member States:

• Continued EU monitoring of national efforts and systemic corruption risks identified in Member States to track progress in the Union over time and encourage and support governments to include anti-corruption action in all relevant national policy programmes;
• Best practice exchange among the 28 EU Member States for mutual learning about successes and failures in tackling corruption

 Openness and integrity of EU democratic life:

• The widest possible access to information, including a proactive approach to making information and documents held by EU institutions and bodies public by default;
• Transparent and ethical lobbying through mandatory lobby registers and legislative footprints;
• Parliamentary integrity safeguarded by accountability towards their constituents and mandatory codes of conduct for parliamentarians, clear conflict of interest regulations, revolving door restrictions and rules on disclosure of interests, assets and income;
• Robust and transparent public contracting (including at municipality level) with strong corruption safeguards as well as accessible and open data information on contracts awarded and public money spent;
• Clean political party financing with transparent and limited private donations, and effective oversight mechanisms.

 A corruption-free EU private sector:

•  High legal standards of corporate transparency covering both financial and non-financial information relevant to anti-corruption efforts to encourage more socially responsible behaviour of private entities;
• More transparent and accountable governance of the EU financial sector to avoid undue influence and regulatory capture.

 A global focus on the fight against corruption:

•  An EU foreign policy towards partner countries and in international fora such as the United Nations and the G8/G20 that continuously promotes action against corruption;
• Prevention of flows of dirty money acquired through corrupt practices inside and outside the EU through a robust EU anti-money laundering regime (including transparency of beneficial ownership of companies) as well as the facilitation of stolen assets recovery and repatriation to their country of origin;
• EU assistance to third countries (enlargement, neighbourhood and developing world) should be protected from corruption and support anti-corruption reforms.

Diagnosis of key issues in the EU (EU Anti-Corruption Report February 2014)

1. Petty Corruption: Although petty corruption is not as rampant as in some parts of the world, it remains a big problem in many EU countries. Citizens in Greece, Lithuania and Romania still find themselves having to pay a bribe for access to basic services such as healthcare. That is perhaps the most direct and tangible impact on people’s lives. Overall, however, this is not the major issue. Only 4% of citizens on average have been asked for a bribe or expect to pay one.
2. Political Corruption: Failure on the part of politicians to self-regulate, in particular to regulate the conflicts of interest that are a consequence of their dealings with business. This has given rise to recurrent corruption scandals in political party financing, awarding of public contracts and the ‘revolving door’ between industry and government.
3. Revolving Door: The ‘revolving door’ is a particularly insidious corruption risk, since rewards for favouring companies or sectors come in the form of board directorships or other prominent positions rather than cash kickbacks .
4. Prosecution: Anti-corruption and anti-bribery legislation are often poorly enforced, especially when it comes to complex, high-level cases. There are long delays in bringing cases to court, legal hurdles such as immunity rules for elected officials and statutes of limitations, and a ’hands-off’ approach from the police when it comes to members of the establishment and political interference in investigations, not to mention corrupt judges. Police and government agencies are often starved of resources.
5. Transparency of lobbying: In the complex world of public policy-making, it is desirable for public administrations to engage in a continuous dialogue with outside stakeholders. All interested parties should be able to have their say, but this should be done in a transparent way. As lobbying activities can raise risks of corruption and regulatory capture, it is desirable to have mechanisms in place to frame such activities, be it through legislation or a voluntary registration of lobbyists. Such mechanisms can help to create both clarity and transparency in the relationship between public authorities and outside stakeholders. As such, they can help to reduce the risk of corruption. So far, this area has been developed in relatively few Member States, though some other Member States have legislation or rules in the pipeline or are debating the possibility of introducing new mechanisms