TI Position

• The fight against corruption in any country that wishes to join the EU is a question of the EU's integrity as a whole and the right of its citizens to responsive, reliable and fair public institutions.
• The enlargement process so far has has shown that fighting corruption should be a permanent to priority on the EU's accession agenda.
• Clear standards need to be set out for candidate countries from the beginning, urging them to adopt and implement necessary anti-corruption legislation.
• Accession negotiations are a window of opportunity for the fight against corruption in these countries.
• Progress towards implemented anti-corruption standards needs to be monitored by independent bodies and civil society included in permanent monitoring mechanisms. A transparent pre-accession process based on objective criteria.
• Incentives need to be put into place so that new Member States do not reduce their reform pace after accession.

Issues

• The European Commission has identified anti-corruption refom as a critical yardstick and one of the largest conditions for accession countries to meet.
• TI is an important civil society actor holding governments accountable with TI’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI) and TI National Chapters in accession countries helping to monitor the anti-corruption progress made.
• Experience shows that once countries have become members of the EU, external pressure is severely reduced and corruption is more likely to reoccur.
• As anti-corruption efforts typically slow down considerably as soon as countries become EU Member States, the post-accession special monitoring (‘Cooperation and Verification Mechanism’) in Bulgaria and Romania is strongly welcomed by TI and should be a model for all future EU newcomers and the EU in general.

Press Releases

• 6 November 2008: TI welcomes ‘anti-corruption’ emphasis in 2008 EU Enlargement Progress Reports. Read more.

Agenda

• 14 October 2009: Enlargement progress reports

Projects

• Towards an EU-wide anti-corruption monitoring system
  TI chapters in EU accession candidate countries as well as in EU member states monitor the implementation of EU anti-corruption criteria, based on the relevant EU document Acquis Communautaire - click here for more information. They also lobby for their country's compliance with the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC). .
• The Accountability Programme in the Western Balkans (September 2002 – January 2006) worked to address deficiencies in governmental accountability and to provide solutions through areas of good governance. For more information see: Accountability Programme rationale and outline. As follow-up to this programme, TI produced an overview on the access to information in several South Eastern European countries.
• Court Watch Survey conducted in Albania (2005)
  This survey about citizens’ perception of corruption in ten Albanian districts revealed that judges and prosecutors came third and fourth in a ranking of the districts' professions perceived to be most corrupted- after customs and tax officials. Citizen Advocacy Office has focussed on corruption in the justice system. Concentrated efforts have been put into identifying the problems and factors that cause vulnerability to corruption in order to, promote legal improvements and radical institutional reforms that are indispensable to eradicate corruption in the judiciary. For more information see TI Albania.

Links

• For a complete overview of corruption and the EU accession process, please see TI’s paper on corruption and the EU accession process (2006). Download here.
• Anti-Corruption measures as political criteria for EU accession: Lessons from the Bulgaria experience (U4 Brief). Download.