Brussels, 06/06/2011 (Agence Europe) - Alongside the supervision mechanisms which already apply to the member states that recently joined the EU, more specifically Bulgaria and Romania under the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism (CVM), the European Commission announced on Monday 6 June that it wishes to adopt new tools to assess the phenomenon of corruption in all 27 countries of the EU.
It intends to publish in 2013 (and every two years) a report, the anti-corruption report of the EU, to take stock of corruption in the EU, from political corruption to corruption in public procurement, in the private sector and in sport, and laying emphasis on best practice within the member states. It also plans to get the EU involved with the work of the Council of Europe on the subject and, in particular, with its assessment group, the Group of States against Corruption, GRECO, which was set up in 1999. A proposed decision to this effect was put to Monday's Council.
On the basis of various studies, the Commission estimates that currently, corruption costs the EU nearly €120 billion every year, or 1% of its GDP, although it is impossible to have fully reliable statistics on the phenomenon. It is also one of the problems the Commission would like to raise. It is planning to set up an independent expert group to decide on the criteria and methodologies to study and quantify the phenomenon.
As a basis for its report, the Commission will use the work of many other bodies, such as studies by the OECD, GRECO, the United Nations and various NGOs, such as Transparency International, which establishes regular international barometers of corruption and perception indices of corruption. But the Commission will not make any categorisations itself, warned Commissioner Cecilia Malmström, and will try not to single out any particular member state. The idea is to update certain practices, which will not spare any member state, the Commission continues.
Creating its tools, the Commission hopes that the EU27 will commit more strongly to the fight against all practices of corruption and to implement the existing legal framework adequately. This is made up mainly of international instruments, broken down into the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC), instruments of the Council of Europe (Convention on corruption) and the OECD. In 2003, the EU also took on anti-corruption legislation in the private sector. However, all of these instruments are still ill-applied by the member states, the Commission lamented on Monday.
As it explains in its press release, the anti-corruption legislation of the EU has not been transposed in all member states (the Commission may not take action against these countries until 2014). “Certain countries have still not ratified the principal international instruments” and “still more importantly, even where the anti-corruption institutions and legislation are in place, their application is often insufficient in practice”. This observation highlights the “absence of genuine political commitment on the part of the leaders and decision-makers to attack corruption in all its forms”, the Commission continues.
Its report intends, amongst other things, to highlight the shortcomings of the EU27 in implementing this legal framework. In 2011, the EU will grant “greater attention to the aspect of corruption in all related policies, both internal and external”, added the Commission. In 2011, it will present a legislative initiative on the freezing of assets of criminal gangs and will adopt a strategy to fight fraud affecting the financial interests of the Union. In 2012, it will present a European strategy designed to increase the quality of the criminal financial investigations in the member states and a proposal on the modernisation of the rules governing the award of public procurement contracts, accounting standards and auditing requirements in European businesses. (S.P./transl.fl)