CER: How to fight corruption and uphold the rule of law

Corruption is a serious crime and happens everywhere. It is also very expensive: depending on the data one chooses to believe, corruption reduces EU GDP by between €120 and €990 billion every year.1 Corruption reduces growth and investment in Europe: in countries where corruption is perceived as widespread, like Cyprus, Greece or Romania, it can act as a deterrent to the establishment of both local and foreign companies.2 Whatever the true figure, corruption is an undeniable drag on the European economy.

• Corruption damages the economy, can lead to the collapse of governments and diminishes citizens’ trust in institutions. While it may be possible for corrupt systems to coexist with the functioning of the rule of law, in practice the worse the corruption, the more likely it is to endanger the rule of law.
• The COVID-19 pandemic is testing the strength of Europe’s democratic institutions. The post-pandemic recovery fund will be part of the EU’s biggest budget to date, and will be susceptible to corruption, political manipulation and outright fraud.
• The EU will need a stronger anti-graft strategy to ensure that corruption does not undermine democracy in the member-states, and that the bloc’s post-pandemic budget boosts economic recovery rather than enriching well-connected elites. The Union must upgrade its lines of defence.
• The new European Public Prosecutor (EPPO), an EU body with powers to prosecute criminals for the misuse of EU funds, is a good idea but risks failure because some member-states, including those with significant corruption problems, have chosen not to take part in it.
• The EU should help the EPPO by, for example, using existing instruments such as European Investigation Orders, to initiate anti-corruption investigations in countries that do not belong to the EPPO. The EU should also make the disbursement of EU funds conditional on joining the EPPO.
• But the EPPO must be part of a wider plan: a full-spectrum anti-corruption strategy should not focus on laws and institutions alone. One crucial part of this strategy should be an uncompromising defence of the judiciary.
• Recent case law from the European Court of Justice allows the EU to penalise governments for attacking the judiciary through seemingly innocent moves, such as changing internal disciplinary procedures. The Union should use these coercive powers forcefully.
• The EU should set up better anti-corruption enforcement mechanisms. It should begin by joining the Council of Europe’s Group of States against Corruption (GRECO). It should also make better use of the European Semester process, which the EU uses to scrutinise national macroeconomic and budgetary policies, to further fight corruption. Ultimately, in order to reduce money laundering the EU could give the European Banking Authority (EBA) greater oversight powers.
• The EU should revamp its rule of law review mechanism to give itself more powers to fight corruption. This could take the shape of a properly enforced peer-review mechanism of member-states’ democratic institutions, as allowed by Article 70 of the Lisbon treaty.
• The EU’s most pressing tasks in the coming years may be to defend democratic institutions and to protect them from corruption. But the Union will not succeed by sheer regulatory force and sanctions alone. To uphold the rule of law, the EU also needs policies to support a critical and strong civil society.

 
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Πηγή: cer.eu