GRECO — States responding to the global threat of corruption
No country is immune to corruption. Government action to prevent and fight this corruption does, however, not always work as foreseen, may be not far reaching enough or not well implemented. Moreover, corruption is a global threat, so states cannot act alone. The Council of Europe (CoE) has created the Group of States against Corruption (GRECO), which monitors its members’ compliance with CoE standards and calls out non-compliance countries, as we saw in recent months regarding Belarus, Albania and Malta. Agnès Maîtrepierre is magistrate, seconded to the Legal Department of the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs of France. She is also heading the French delegation of GRECO and acts as its GRECO’s Vice-President. Below she provides some of the key aspects of GRECO and its work, just in time for its 20th anniversary in 2019.
By Agnès Maîtrepierre, Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs of France
The Group of States against Corruption (GRECO), which was set up in 1999, is the Council of Europe’s anti-corruption body. It is one of many international forums concerned with the fight against corruption, such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the United Nationals Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the EU, the G7, the G20 and the Organisation of American States (OAS). The plethora of such forums testifies not only to the international dimension of corruption, from which no state is completely immune, but also to the need for a common response to the global threat it poses, as states cannot act alone.
As a result, several international conventions on the subject were adopted about 20 years ago, not only by the Council of Europe [1] but also by the OECD, UNODC, the OAS and the African Union [2]. Their adoption was accompanied by the setting up, in the various forums, of bodies designed to ensure that the signatory States comply with their international commitments. These bodies also play a leading role in the development of existing international standards by making recommendations to individual States with a view to increasing their capacity to fight corruption. The recommendations, which form a body of doctrine (‘soft law’), do not have the same binding force as a freely made international commitment (‘hard law’), but act as a powerful lever that encourages States to step up their anti-corruption measures.
Using a peer-based approach
This incentive effect owes much to the existence, in most of these forums, of peer-based procedures. These involve each State not only being evaluated and then examined as regards the extent to which it has implemented the resulting recommendations, but also participating in the evaluation and follow-up of other States.
The effect is all the more significant as the procedure for monitoring recommendations takes place over several years. Through a series of mutual incentives, these evaluation and monitoring procedures create a common dynamic of progress in the fight against corruption. In addition to this method, which is common to the various anti-corruption bodies, GRECO has a number of unique features.
Essentially a European geographical coverage and increasing
GRECO’s first unique feature is its number of member states and geographical coverage. GRECO currently has 49 member states, meaning that its scope of evaluation and monitoring is slightly broader than the OECD’s (44 States), but narrower than UNODC’s (185 States). Unlike the OECD and UNODC, GRECO’s geographical coverage is essentially European. Almost all GRECO member states are members of the Council of Europe, and the latter’s 47 member states have been members of GRECO since 2010; all the Member States of the European Union are also members. Another member state, Belarus, is a member neither of the Council of Europe nor of the European Union.
At present, GRECO has only one non-European member: the United States. The fact that the US participated in drafting the agreement that established GRECO was the basis for its being admitted as a member. The US still contributes actively to GRECO’s work, even if it remains the only GRECO member state that is not yet a party to the Criminal Law Convention against Corruption. However, it does allow recommendations to be addressed to it by virtue of the Convention being an international standard.
What is GRECO
GRECO was established by a Resolution of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe: Resolution (99) 5, which was adopted on 1 May 1999. This Resolution established GRECO in the form of a so-called ‘enlarged and partial agreement,’ which involves the participation not only of a number of Council of Europe member states (at least one third) but also of states outside the Council of Europe.
GRECO’s objective is to improve the capacity of its members to fight corruption by monitoring their compliance with Council of Europe anti-corruption standards through a dynamic process of mutual evaluation and peer pressure. It helps to identify deficiencies in national anti-corruption policies, promoting the necessary legislative, institutional and practical reforms. To this end, GRECO is assisted by a secretariat in Strasbourg.
GRECO works in cycles, called evaluation rounds, each covering specific themes. The first evaluation rounds started in 2000 and since then themes like independence, specialisation and means of national bodies engaged in the prevention and fight against corruption, or the identification, seizure and confiscations of corruption proceeds have been covered. The current evaluation round, launched in 2017, aims at preventing corruption and promoting integrity in central governments and law enforcement agencies. GRECO follows a two-step procedure comprising a mutual evaluation and a compliance program, which is applied to all members for each evaluation round.
Other non-European States are likely to join GRECO, as membership is open not only to those who took part in drafting the founding agreement or who have ratified the Criminal Law Convention on Corruption, but also to those who are invited to join by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, subject to their commitment to observe the guiding principles of the fight against corruption, as defined by Resolution (97)/24.
GRECO’s Statute (Article 5) and Rules of Procedure (Article 2) expressly provide for European Union participation in its work. On 16 May 2017, the European Parliament adopted a resolution encouraging the European Union to submit an application for membership. The arrangements for the European Union’s participation in GRECO’s work — whether as a member or just as an observer — are still the subject of debate at the Council in Brussels.
Fight against corruption based on the rule of law, democracy and fundamental rights
GRECO’s second unique feature is its approach to the fight against corruption. As a Council of Europe body, GRECO is naturally inclined to favour an approach based on the values the Council defends, i.e. the rule of law, democracy and human rights. This approach differs from that of the OECD, which essentially aims to promote economic development and growth by ensuring that foreign trade is secure.
This difference of approach reflects the multifaceted nature of corruption and the type of relationships it affects. This is true not only of horizontal relations between businesses (corruption distorts competition), but also of vertical relations (corruption undermines citizens’ trust in public institutions, thereby threatening the stability of democracies to the detriment of good governance and the common good). While the OECD focuses on the horizontal aspect, GRECO focuses on the vertical, which explains the particular attention paid to the institutional systems of the individual States that are evaluated.
To fight corruption, the Council of Europe adopted a number of multifaceted standard setting instruments, aimed at improving the capacity of States to fight corruption domestically as well as at international level. GRECO is entrusted with monitoring compliance with these standards. Some examples of these standards are:
- The Criminal Law Convention on Corruption
- The Civil Law Convention on Corruption
- The Twenty Guiding Principles against Corruption
- The Recommendations on Codes of Conduct for Public Officials; and
- The Recommendations on Common Rules against Corruption in the Funding of Political Parties and Electoral Campaigns.
For GRECO, the fight against corruption is key to understanding each institutional system. This analytical focus makes it possible to identify shortcomings and vulnerabilities in each country, which could encourage corruption to develop. This approach is essentially preventive, as repressive measures in the fight against corruption — although necessary — are insufficient.
For this reason, after assessing the tools that are available to States for prosecuting and sanctioning corruption, GRECO is currently focusing on measures to prevent corruption and to promote the integrity of public officials — Members of Parliament, judges, senior civil servants (including top executive functions) and the police.
New emergency procedure to respond to exceptional circumstances
GRECO’s third unique feature is its recent emergency ad hoc evaluation procedure. This was introduced in June 2017 by amending GRECO’s Rules of Procedure to respond to exceptional circumstances, where a state appears to be undergoing a worrying structural change that could lead to a reversal in the fight against corruption. GRECO is now in a position to act promptly, without having to wait for the next step in the standard procedure for following up recommendations.
GRECO’s intervention, which is based on an accelerated procedure, involves requesting additional information from the state concerned and, where appropriate, carrying out an ad hoc assessment, if necessary by means of an on-the-spot visit. As under the standard evaluation procedure, a draft report is drawn up and discussed at a plenary meeting on the first available date. This new procedure enables the international community to bring an additional source of pressure to bear on the state concerned.
To date, this procedure has been used twice for two EU Member States (Poland and Romania) in response to their reforms in the fields of justice and criminal legislation.
Looking at 20 years of GRECO action against corruption
The Council of Europe views corruption as a serious threat to its core values: pluralist democracy, human rights and the rule of law in Europe. In its fight against corruption the Council of Europe takes a multidisciplinary approach and has adopted multi-faceted instruments to address it. Until now GRECO has completed four thematic evaluation rounds, and is currently implementing its fifth round, through which it aims to act as a catalyst for major policy and legislative changes and anti-corruption reforms in both the public and private sectors of its Member States.
This year GRECO will celebrate its 20th anniversary. The French Presidency of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe will organise a high-level conference in Strasbourg on 17 June 2019. This conference provides an opportunity to report on GRECO’s achievements so far, to take stock of its current work and to reflect on the new challenges it faces to work as a pan-European centre of anti-corruption monitoring and expertise.
[1] Criminal Law Convention on Corruption (ETS No 173) of 21 January 1999, and its Additional Protocol (ETS No 191) of 15 May 2003; Civil Law Convention on Corruption (ETS No 174), of 4 November 1999. These Council of Europe instruments, together with the Enlarged Partial Agreement establishing GRECO, are a follow-up to Resolution (97)24 of 6 November 1997 by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, which lists 20 guiding principles for the fight against corruption.
[2] The Inter-American Convention against Corruption of 29 March 1996; the OECD Convention of 11 July 2003 on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions; the African Union Convention of 11 July 2003 on Preventing and Combating Corruption, and the United Nations Convention against Corruption of 31 October 2003 (the “Merida Convention”).
This article was first published on the 2/2019 issue of the ECA Journal. The contents of the interviews and the articles are the sole responsibility of the interviewees and authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the European Court of Auditors.
