The New European Commission Anti-Corruption Package: Towards a More Efficient Fight against Corruption?

Abstract

With the new Anticorruption package introduced by the European Commission in June 2011, measures to address more vigorously the serious harm inflicted on the EU by corruption have been announced. Efforts to tackle corruption by the EU and the international community are nothing new. The package is a continuation of the previous modest actions for addressing corruption in EU internal and external policies coming as a response to increasing financial loss due to corruption in the EU and citizens' decreasing confidence in the capacity of national and EU institutions to fight this problem. Among the package's proposed measures, the main novelty is the Anticorruption report, which will be published for the first time in 2013 and will assess EU Member States' efforts in the field of corruption. In view of the renewed commitment to fight corruption in EU and the new important tool introduced to monitor corruption in EU there is a clear need to explore whether the proposed actions mitigate the weaknesses of the previous frameworks and cope efficiently with the problem of corruption. The analysis suggests further measures to be adopted to address the major challenges: ensuring political will and improving enforcement of EU anticorruption policy.