Strasbourg, 13/06/2013 (Agence Europe) - “Guests” or unregistered lobbyists at parliamentary meetings in Poland, lack of “guidelines” on these same lobbyists in the United Kingdom, lack of clarity with regard to conflicts of interest, thresholds for financial declarations by MPs and their families, and the issue of “gifts” - the matters raised in the annual report of the Council of Europe's Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) published on Thursday 13 June are numerous and also relate to judges and prosecutors in the five states visited in 2012: United Kingdom, Poland, Slovenia, Latvia and Estonia. This is the thirteenth report by GRECO and the first of its fourth round of evaluation focusing on how states address issues such as conflicts of interest, declarations of assets and interests, gifts, lobbying, transparency of the political processes, and involvement in other professional activities with regard to Members of Parliament, judges and prosecutors.
This focus is essential as was emphasised by Council of Europe Secretary General Thorbjorn Jagland who stated that “corruption cases involving parliamentarians, judges or prosecutors have a devastating effect on the trust citizens have in their democratic institutions. Citizens depend on these professionals to tackle corruption wherever it exists and so they must also lead by example. If corrupt behaviour is tolerated within their own ranks, its corrosive effects spread like a disease”.
The very detailed GRECO report makes a clear call to the professions concerned to prevent and unequivocally tackle corruption in their own ranks, whilst providing a detailed overview of problems and potential solutions in the different member states, even when these countries have similar political or legal systems. This exercise will continue in 2013 with seven other countries: France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, the Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. The results of this exercise will, then, constitute the fourteenth GRECO report.
The thirteenth report presents, for the first time, statistics on the overall levels of compliance with its recommendations by Council of Europe member states. Some three years after they were first evaluated, more than three-quarters of member states have fully complied with GRECO's recommendations from the first and second observation rounds. One of these rounds focused on the independence of national bodies in charge of tackling corruption, and the other on the identification, seizure and confiscation of proceeds of corruption and the links between corruption, organised crime and money laundering. (VL/transl.fl)