Transparency International EU will launch a report on the 24th April on corruption risks in the EU institutions

On 24 April, the Transparency International EU Office (TI-EU) will publish its report on The European Union Integrity System. It is the first report that will look at how the EU institutions deal with the issues linked with corruption, or how they promote a culture of public sector integrity and contribute to fight against corruption within Europe.

All the reports made until now mainly focused on how Member States deal with corruption or integrity. For instance, in 2012, Transparency International released a report on studies made in 25 countries of Europe on National Integrity System. Moreover, the European Commission in its EU report Anti-corruption did not make a chapter on the EU institutions.
All these elements added to the fact that there are 70 % of european public that believe that corruption is present in the EU institutions –notably because of the recent scandals that have touched the Parliament and the Commission- demonstrate the need for a study on this issue, in order to have a clear picture of how well “equipped the EU’s governance structures are to deal with corruption risks and to keep high standards of public ethics”. 

The report will also include recommendations for reform across 10 EU institutions which are the European Parliament, the European Council, the Council of Ministers and  European Commission but also institutions which act as watchdog within the EU : the Court of Justice of the EU, the European Court of Auditors, the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF), Europol and Eurojust and the European Ombudsman.

The report will develop recommandation for each institution but recommandations made can be grouped under 5 categories of actions on which the EU institutions should focus:

• "the promotion of a policy of "transparency by default" in the EU decision making process"
• "the management of conflict of interest of senior EU decision makers"
• "setting up effective whistle-blowing procedures"
• "improving the embarment procedure" and
• "establishing an independent european public prosecutor with broad anti-corruption power"

On the 29th April from 2.30 to 6 pm, a public conference will be held with a keynote address by  the EU Ombudsman, Ms O’Reilly. Representants from EU institutions, Professors and the civil society will participate to the two disussions. The first will be on "More EU accountability and transparency: can it only come with less efficiency?" and  the second on "Too little integrity, too much influence. Stocktaking EU efforts to curb undue lobbying and conflict of interests". 

More information on the study are available at: http://www.transparencyinternational.eu/focus_areas/eu-integrity-study/