Tag Archives: European Parliament

New Podcast Episode, Featuring Daniel Freund

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A new episode of KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast is now available. In this week’s episode, my collaborators Nils Köbis and Jonathan Kleinpass interview Daniel Freund, a German representative in the European Parliament, where he serves on the Committee on Budgetary Control and co-chairs the Parliament’s Anti-Corruption Intergroup. Mr. Freund discusses the risks of corruption (or other forms of misappropriation) of EU funds and how to close these loopholes, as well as the use of conditionalities to promote the rule of law. Much of the interview focuses on the challenges posed by states like Hungary, where the Orban regime’s suppression of media freedom and judicial independence has created a situation in which Orban and his cronies are looting the state and enriching themselves to the tune of over one billion Euros per year, as well as entrenching their own power through a system of favoritism and crony capitalism. Mr. Freund discusses the challenges that the Hungarian situation poses for the EU, and the institutional mechanisms that the EU might use to respond this and similar situations.

You can find this episode here. You can also find both this episode and an archive of prior episodes at the following locations:

KickBack is a collaborative effort between GAB and the ICRN. If you like it, please subscribe/follow, and tell all your friends! And if you have suggestions for voices you’d like to hear on the podcast, just send me a message and let me know.

The European Union Elections and the Future of European Anticorruption Policy

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GAB is pleased to welcome back Professor Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, chair of the European Research Centre for Anticorruption and State-Building at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. Her many publications include the Cambridge University Press volume A Quest for Good Governance: How Societies Build Control of Corruption and most recently “Romania’s Italian-Style Anticorruption Populism,” in the July 2018 issue of the Journal of Democracy.

Do Europeans care about corruption?  If the results of the May election to the European Parliament are any guide, they do.  Turnout to fill its 751 seats was the highest since the first election in 1979, and polling data shows corruption was a top concern of many voters. A YouGov poll found corruption and migration were what troubled voters the most, and earlier research had shown that respondents’ perceptions of how member governments handled corruption to be a good predictor of their trust of both national-level and European-wide institutions. Party leaders apparently believed these polls. The heads of the major ones all issued pre-election statements denouncing corruption and backing open government (a surprise given their foot-dragging on a parliamentary ethics code and reluctance to commit to greater transparency in the operation of the parliament itself).

Can Brussels solve what voters believe is the problem of corruption in Europe? This very large question can be unpacked into three more manageable ones:

Is Europe in fact as corrupt as Europeans think it is?  Are their perceptions of corruption matched by reality?

Do the results of the May elections indeed reflect a demand for stronger anticorruption policies and better governance?

If Europeans are indeed demanding better governed, less corrupt polities, can the EU’s limited anticorruption instruments satisfy the voters demand? Continue reading →

Brussels v. Bucharest: The Kövesi Case and the Future of EU Anticorruption Policy

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Last week Matthew suggested that the Romanian government’s fierce opposition to Ms. Laura Cordruta Kövesi’s candidacy to head the European Public Prosecutors’ Office is a good reason why she should be chosen.  Ms. Kövesi led Romania’s anticorruption agency, the Direcţia Naţională Anticorupţie (DNA), until fired last July for what many observers believe was her refusal to back-off prosecuting senior members of the ruling party.  That her own government, one of Europe’s more corrupt, so opposes her, Matthew argued, is a sign that it knows, and fears, how effective she would be as Europe’s chief prosecutor.

In today’s guest post, Alina Mungiu-Pippidi offers a different perspective  – on why Ms. Kövesi is a candidate for the position and her government’s opposition to her selection and goes on to explain how the controversy arises from the European Union’s ham-handed intervention into Romanian politics, an intervention that has set back the country’s fight against corruption.  Professor Mungiu-Pippidi spear-headed several widely-praised anticorruption movements in Romania before becoming director of the European Research Centre for Anticorruption and State-Building and Professor at Berlin’s Hertie School of Governance. She is the author most recently of The Quest for Good Governance: How Societies Build Control of Corruption. Cambridge University Press will soon release her Europe’s Burden: Promoting Good Governance across Borders.

The Western media obsessed over Laura Codruta’s Kövesi’s firing as chief of the Romanian anticorruption agency at the demand of the Romania’s Justice Minister. It is again obsessing about her now that she is the European Parliament’s candidate for the job of European Public Prosecutor (EPP). That institution was recently created at the instance of another Romanian, former Justice Minister Monica Macovei, currently an independent Member of European Parliament who, as Romanian Justice Minister, first appointed Ms. Kövesi. Having fired Ms. Kövesi, the Romanian government is now attacking her candidacy, publicizing allegations of misconduct while she ran the agency and calling for her to be questioned about them at precisely the time she is scheduled to appear before the European Parliament on her nomination.

Whether the European Union needs a new, union-wide public prosecution office is itself open to debate. Ms. Kövesi’s selection as one of three finalists to head the office is even more questionable.  It appears to be Europe’s way of taking revenge on the Romanian government for firing her.  Continue reading →

The Romanian Government Opposes the Appointment of Laura Codruta Kovesi as European Public Prosecutor. That’s Why She Should Get the Job.

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There’s so much bad news in the anticorruption world these days that it’s hard to keep up. But I’ve recently been reading up on the ongoing debates in Europe over the selection of the first European Public Prosecutor, and I think this issue deserves some discussion, and even more attention from the anticorruption community in Europe and around the world.

Here’s the quick background for those who aren’t familiar with this issue: Back in 2017, 20 EU Member States agreed to create a new institution called the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO), headed by a European Public Prosecutor, with authority to investigate and prosecute (in national courts) offenses connected to the EU’s financial interests, such as fraud or embezzlement involving EU funds. (22 EU countries have now agreed to participate in the EPPO system.) The EPPO is scheduled to begin operations in late 2020 or early 2021, and the EU is in the process of selecting the first EPPO head. The three finalists are a Jean-Francois Bohnert of France, Andres Ritter of Germany, and Laura Corduta Kovesi from Romania. Ms. Kovesi had been considered a frontrunner, and still might secure the post, but her candidacy is under attack from her own government. Indeed, it seems that intense lobbying against her by the Romanian government is what led the Committee of Permanent Representatives in the European Union to back Bohnert for the job, though the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice, and Home Affairs voted to support Kovesi. The selection process is still ongoing, and it’s not clear when a final decision will be made. For those getting cold feet about Kovesi, though, it seems that the opposition of her home government is a significant reason.

In my view that’s not only wrong, but backwards. The Romanian government’s no-holds-barred, all-out attack on Kovesi is one of the best arguments for appointing her. I don’t know enough about the candidates to have a considered view of which of them, all else equal, would do the best job heading the EPPO, but assuming that they are all basically well-qualified, the Romanian ruling party’s panic over the prospect that Kovesi might get the job is exactly why she should be appointed, for two reasons:

  • First, the fact that government of one of the most corrupt countries in the EU—one with the greatest theft and misappropriation of EU funds—is terrified that Kovesi might get the job, but apparently fine with either of the other two choices, is strong evidence that she’ll be more effective. After all, if we were selecting the city police chief, and we found out that the local mafia boss strongly objected to candidate A, but was fine with candidates B and C, that seems like a point in candidate A’s favor, not a strike against her. (And if you think it’s unfair to compare the government of an EU member state to an organized crime family, well, read on.)
  • Second, the Romanian government is conducting a fairly blatant attempt to misuse its justice system in order to interfere with an EU decision process, in the context of a corrupt and increasingly illiberal ruling party. The EU is already struggling to deal with backsliding in Hungary and Poland, and it needs to show that it won’t be bullied or manipulated, and that if Member States want to be treated as good EU citizens, they need to comport with basic norms.

Now, given that I just made those statements with what sounds like great confidence, and the rest of this post may adopt a similarly confident tone, I should immediately add the caveat that I am not an expert on Romania, I’ve never been there, I don’t speak the language, and all I know about the situation, as the old saying goes, is what I read in the papers. So if you want to say I don’t know what I’m talking about, fair enough, you have a point. But I’ve been reading a lot about this, and what I’ve read seems both sufficiently scary, and sufficiently clear, to merit comment. Moreover, I think the Romanian government’s strategy relies in part on non-experts feeling like they don’t really understand what’s going on, so that it starts to feel like that, in the face of conflicting narratives (a sort of he said/she said), it’s best just to avoid controversy by supporting a “safe” choice for EPPO head. We’ve got to resist that impulse. Appointing someone other than Kovesi may seem like the safe choice, but that’s exactly why Kovesi is the right choice. Continue reading →

Guest Post: Development Aid–A Blind Spot for EU Anticorruption Efforts

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GAB is pleased to welcome back Jesper Johnsøn, Senior Advisor at the U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre, who, along with his colleagues Nils Taxell and Thor Olav Iversen, contributes the following guest post:

A new study from the European Parliament entitled Cost of Corruption in Developing Countries – How Effectively is Aid Being Spent? shows that, despite an impressive track record of ambitious anticorruption reforms in countries working toward European Union membership, the EU’s overall anticorruption strategy marginalizes efforts to address corruption through development aid. The EU could spend aid more effectively, the report concludes, if it prioritized corruption control in developing countries. The analysis in the report suggests several measures that the EU should adopt to reduce corruption in its development aid programs:

Continue reading →