II. Situating the EU anti-corruption law in the international sphere

Since the 1990s, anti-corruption regulations have been the norm in the international sphere. The OECD Anti-Bribery Convention,Footnote ² the United Nations Convention Against Corruption,Footnote ³ regional agreements such as the Council of Europe Conventions against Corruption,Footnote ⁴ the wide scope of implementation of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices ActFootnote ⁵ and countless democracy promotion programs,Footnote ⁶ have made anti-corruption one of the primary elements of good governance programs around the world.

This regulatory flow has been accompanied by a reconceptualisation of corruption – not merely as a crime, but as a threat to the integrity of legal and institutional orders.Footnote ⁷ Corruption replaces lawful interactions between citizens and public officials with illicit ones, undermining the functioning of the legal order itself. While academic debate continues over which public law value corruption harms, it is widely accepted that it disrupts legal systems.Footnote ⁸ In response to this threat, thanks to the proliferation of these international and regional tools, anti-corruption has evolved into a kind of “transnational legal order.”Footnote ⁹ This perspective treats corruption as a structural threat to the rule of law, regardless of scale or whether criminal elements are involved. It aligned with a global shift toward administrative responses to corruption, supplementing traditional criminal enforcement with tools like independent oversight bodies and integrity rules for public officials.Footnote ¹⁰

The tide has, however, recently turned. Decreasing budgets of the international development agencies or, in the case of US Agency for International Development, their dismantling has sent a rippling effect whose impact has not yet been quantified.Footnote ¹¹ Looking at the broader international regulatory trends, reveals the EU as one of the few major regulatory actors in the world where the anti-corruption is still taken seriously, as matter of policy and principle.

Indeed, in the last decade, the number of legal instruments and policy documents devoted to the question has significantly increased, extending beyond the sphere of EU criminal Law. While some, like the Directive on combatting corruptionFootnote ¹² , modernise pre-existing texts that form classical components of anti-corruption policies and transpose the EU’s international obligations; others, such as the EU Whistleblowers Directive, the establishment of an Interinstitutional Ethics Body or the announced EU sanctions’ regime against corruption, introduce innovative tools. Initially developed as a peer-review mechanism competing with other international systems, the EU anti-corruption monitoring has found a more structured role. Conceptually, anti-corruption is now a key element of the EU’s understanding of the rule of law and, institutionally, it is a central component of the Commission Rule of Law Report.Footnote ¹³

Hoxhaj’s contribution offers an overview of the reasons and the modalities through which the EU has assumed this anti-corruption task. Dividing this development, from 1997 up until 2025, in six stages he assesses how, in time, the goals and the measures of the EU action have changed and increased. With regard to the goals, the EU anti-corruption action shifted from a purely market perspective – shielding the private sector from the distortive effects of corruption for realising the internal market – to a constitutional understanding of anti-corruption, to ensure integrity and accountability of the public action of both the EU institutions and Member States. With regard to the tools, the most striking aspect is the departure from soft-law measures – such as the early abandoned Anti-Corruption Report of 2014 – to hard law tools, of both institutional – the creation of OLAF in 1999 and EPPO in 2017 – and normative measures, as and the Directive on the protection of EU Financial Interest of 2017 and the Whistleblowing Directive in 2019, culminating now in the Proposal of a new Directive on combating corruption of 2023. Hoxhaj sees in the harmonisation of criminal legislation attempted by the latest proposal of the Directive on combatting corruption, an attempt to bring closer the enforcement practices in Member States, which is now criticised for invading a field traditionally of national competence.Footnote ¹⁴ Indeed, the whole EU anti-corruption law developments trigger questions of legitimacy of this EU action – which in the constitutional terms of the EU Treaties means issues of competences and conferral, and of nature and aim of the same action.

III. The (limited) EU competence in the anti-corruption field and its expansion

Since the Lisbon Treaty, criminal law in EU Member States has been harmonised under the “Judicial Cooperation in Criminal Matters” Footnote ¹⁵ within the “Area of Liberty, Security, and Justice” Footnote ¹⁶ provided by the EU.Footnote ¹⁷ In EU law, legislative harmonisation serves objectives that reflect common European interests and securing common interest, including in criminal law, has been central to the EU’s evolution from an economic area to an integrated, autonomous, and supranational legal order. This shift is reflected in Treaty provisions and procedures aimed at protecting EU values and achieving EU objectives. ^{Footnote 18} In this context, harmonising anti-corruption laws of Member States could be framed as needed to ensure a “high level of security.”Footnote ¹⁹

However, in criminal procedural and substantive law, the EU may legislate only within Articles 82 and 83 TFEU, setting only “minimum standards” for harmonising national laws, and only through “directives.” Also, the very concept of harmonisation presupposes Member States discretion in further regulation and implementation of such rules. Additionally, in judicial cooperation, “positive” harmonisation via EU legislation is secondary to “negative” harmonisation, which eliminates national legal differences through mutual recognition. Positive harmonisation thus functions as a subsidiary tool, as stated in Art. 67 TFEU – “if necessary” – and Art. 82(2) TFEU – “to the extent necessary.” Unlike the single market rules, mutual recognition in criminal justice does not function automatically; under Art. 83(1)(2)(a) TFEU, it can only be implemented through specific “rules and procedures.” Finally, any Member State – via its representative in the Council – may halt legislation that risks affecting “fundamental aspects of its criminal justice system” Footnote ²⁰

Overall, the Treaties adopt a minimalist approach to criminal law approximation. Even where EU competence is clear, the principles of subsidiarity and proportionalityFootnote ²¹ limit harmonisation to cases where national action is insufficient and measures do not go beyond what is necessary. Since anti-corruption measures generally fall under criminal law, the limitations outlined above apply. The clearest reference to EU competence in this area is in Art. 83(1) TFEU, which classifies corruption as a “European crime.” This allows the EU to set minimum standards for defining and sanctioning crimes with a “transnational dimension,” whether due to their nature, impact, or the need for a coordinated response. On this basis, early EU action against corruption focused on criminal law, establishing minimum rules for its prosecution when it affected the Union’s financial interests.Footnote ²²

Given these limitations, the EU’s anti-corruption overall strategy has increasingly focused on protecting constitutional and administrative values. In particular, the EU’s growing commitment to defending the rule of law has driven the adoption of preventive, administrative anti-corruption measures.Footnote ²³ In particular, the legal interest protected, identifiable in the provision of Art. 82 TFEU regarding the EU competence to combat corruption, has progressively merged with that of the rule of law, which “includes the principles of legality, legal certainty, the prohibition of arbitrariness by the executive power, effective judicial protection, the separation of powers, as well as non-discrimination and equality before the law” which the Court of Justice of the European Union has referred to in order to outline the constitutional identity of the EU itself.Footnote ²⁴

The expansion of EU competencies in anti-corruption can be examined through two legal bases in the Treaties: Art. 83 TFEU, which addresses the European dimension of corruption and its punishment, and Art. 2 TEU, which commits the EU to upholding the rule of law. Under Art. 83 TFEU, the approximation of criminal law is not just aimed at reducing legal differences among Member States but also at achieving broader policy goals and shared European interests – such as ensuring a “high level of security” within the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice, as stated in Art. 67(3) TFEU. This objective goes beyond addressing the side effects of an area without internal borders; it supports the EU as a whole by enabling the protection of the values enshrined in Art. 2 TEU. As such, criminal law approximation itself becomes a European common good, forming the basis for an EU anti-corruption framework seen as essential to safeguarding the rule of law.

In this view, the EU’s competence under Article 83 TFEU to combat crimes like corruption arises not only when offenses span multiple Member States, but also when their nature or implications, or the particular need to address them collectively, make EU-level action more effective than national ones. The Court of Justice has adopted a similarly broad interpretation in internal market case law, consistently affirming that the market’s functioning must be protected even against conduct confined to a single Member State. In this context, the Court has interpreted notions such as “effect on” or “harm to” trade expansively, focusing on the potential of conduct to impact trade within the EU – even when limited to one country,Footnote ²⁵ or a region considered a “substantial part of the common market.”Footnote ²⁶ The building, achievement, and maintenance of the internal market is therefore still present. It appears that the EU competence in combating corruption is evolving along similar lines: corruption affects the entire EU system, even if localised in one Member State, as it undermines the rule of law value – that is common to all Member States, horizontal and general in in scope, and necessary element of the EU constitutional identity. This requires EU monitoring and intervention, even when corruption is purely internal, implementing a range of measures that are both repressive and preventive, horizontal and general in nature too, to uphold the rule of law in line with common standards and ensure the highest level of enforcement.

Valsamis Mitsilegas and Clementina Salvi offers a cautious appraisal of this renewed emphasis of EU criminalization and extension of the scope of EU offenses. Focusing on the regulation of illicit enrichment provided in the incoming Directive, the paper illustrates the differences between the international regulation of anti-corruption – in the UNCAC this offense is of semi-mandatory nature, meaning that the States are merely asked to consider to criminalize it – and the EU regulation – where illicit enrichment has to be criminalized by the Member States, but where Directive provision has an ambiguous character resulting from the different positions of the Commission, the Parliament, and the Council, resulted in the introduction of two offences, neither of them arguably being a true enrichment offence but rather resembling the regulation on money laundering. Such ambiguity triggers rule of law-related problems, risking to violating the ne bis in idem principle, and it raises a significant risk of convicting innocent individuals when their explanation of wealth is not accepted as a consequence – notable also at the international level – of the progressive disassociation between criminal sanctions and proof of underlying criminal conduct.

IV. The functioning of anti-corruption in the EU

The relevance of EU anti-corruption has manifested in three pivotal moments for the EU in the recent years: during the confrontation with Member States’ backslidings with regard to EU values; in the gathering, disbursement, and management of EU funds after the economic and pandemic crises; and in response to the geopolitical challenge brought by the invasion of Ukraine. In all these circumstances, the anti-corruption ideal and facilities developed by the EU are playing a key-role.

The first manifestation lies in the EU’s greater commitment to upholding the rule of law in response to violations by Member States governments, whose autocratic tendencies are often also exercised through corruptive behaviours.Footnote ²⁷ Anti-corruption sustained and informed the EU protection of the rule of law, and the re-affirmation of the primacy of its law. Indeed, the proposals for an Article 7(1) TEU determination against Hungary have been closely tied to corruption concerns.Footnote ²⁸ Such concerns have been more evident – and overall more effective, given that Art. 7 TEIU procedure has never been finalised – within the Council Decision for the activation of the Conditionality Mechanism.Footnote ²⁹ The mechanism enables EU institutions to adopt appropriate measures in case any potential rule of law breaches in a Member State threaten the EU’s financial interests.Footnote ³⁰ The connection between corruption and the rule of law, being the former a breach to the latter in, it is marked by the Regulation open reference to “fraud, corruption, conflict of interest, or other breaches of the law.”Footnote ³¹

The concern for anti-corruption is even more evident in the functioning of the mechanism. On the one hand, sound financial management – one of the Regulation’s key goals – can only be ensured if corruption and other breaches of the law are effectively addressed by the competent national authorities.Footnote ³² On the other hand, breaches of the rule of law are identified by the Commission, among other sources, through the assessment of anti-corruption authorities and reports.Footnote ³³ Finally, breaches of the rule of law may involve hindering the implementation of the judgments and the prosecution of law violations.Footnote ³⁴ Accordingly these breaches concern areas such as the prosecution of corruption.Footnote ³⁵ In the case of Hungary, the EU institutions have noted that. systemic breaches to the rule of law have been found in situation pertaining “the prevention and sanctioning of fraud, […], corruption or other breaches of Union law” Footnote ³⁶ and in “a number of issues related to […] the anti-corruption framework, including limitations to effective investigation and prosecution of alleged criminal activity, the organization of the prosecution services, and the absence of a functioning and effective anti-corruption framework in practice.”Footnote ³⁷ These concernsFootnote ³⁸ led the Council to adopt a decision halting the disbursement of funds to Hungary, up to 55 % of the budgetary commitments under several operational programs in Cohesion Policy.Footnote ³⁹ This decision has been maintained in subsequent years.Footnote ⁴⁰

The apex of the juncture between the rule of law and anti-corruption has probably been reached in the now-famous case Commission v Malta. The citizenship by investment scheme operated by Malta was adjudicated to be against the EU values, including the rule of law, as presenting a risk for corruption, money laundering and foreign interference. The judgment has raised more than an eyebrow, particularly by the stretching of the reasoning, the expansion of EU jurisdiction to another eminent national field as citizenship, and for the use of double standards. In their contribution, Kochenov and Basheska particularly highlight the unsoundness of the reasoning of the Court and the employment of the infringement procedure for the reaffirmation of the primacy of EU law by referring to the value of the rule of law, while actually undermining it. Their central claim is that “corruption” functioned as a discursive device deployed by the Commission to engineer a competence breakthrough in a field where it had none. By demonstrating that no other mode of citizenship acquisition bearing comparable or greater corruption risk (including opaque discretionary naturalisations for “special economic achievements” in several Member States) was ever subjected to comparable institutional pressure, they expose the selective logic underlying the Commission’s efforts. The piece thus raises a sharper question for the special issue as a whole: can the maturing of EU anti-corruption law be said to consolidate the rule of law when its most high-profile judicial moment proceeds entirely without reference to anti-corruption, relying instead on an expansive reading of sincere cooperation?

Whether this case should be regarded as of constitutional importance for EU law and its primacy, or as a downgrade in the protection of the principles of rule of law and conferral, it is important to point out that, since 2022, numerous Rule of Law Reports have highlighted the inherent risk of corruption in such citizenship schemes and recommended that Member States using them discontinue the practice. This recommendation has been implemented by all recipients, with the exception of Malta, and thus no infringement procedure was initiated against them.Footnote ⁴¹

Secondly, anti-corruption became a conditional element for disbursing and blocking the EU funds. The EU’s implementation of post-pandemic tools to foster resilience and growth has been designed to also ensuring the effective use of EU funds, and avoid a mismanagement of them, or a financement of illegal activities. In this context, the originally soft-law recommendations on anti-corruption – derived first from the Anti-Corruption ReportFootnote ⁴² and then from the Rule of Law Report – have evolved into conditional measures when combined with the Recovery Facility Regulations.

These recommendations are used by the Commission to assess the compliance of the National Recovery and Resilience Plans: the Commission only disburses funds to Member States upon achievement of pre-agreed milestones laid out in these Plans, which must address a substantial sub-set of country-specific recommendations issued under the European Semester.Footnote ⁴³ Such recommendations, in turn, look at the Rule of Law Country Reports and their recommendations in the field of anti-corruption. As such, corruption is a topic that a country has to deal with – according to the gravity of the domestic situation – for having its own National Recovery and Resilience Plan green-lighted, in accordance with the recommendations contained in the European Semester.Footnote ⁴⁴ Moreover, the arrangements proposed in the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, as a condition for approval, have to adequately prevent, detect and correct corruption, fraud and conflicts of interest in the use of funds provided by the Regulation,Footnote ⁴⁵ and it extends to the implementation phase of the facility.Footnote ⁴⁶ Moreover, in cases where Member States fail to meet this obligation, the Commission can adopt corrective measures.Footnote ⁴⁷ By aligning anti-corruption reforms with economic conditionality, the EU has enhanced its influence over core national domains, making conditionality a defining feature of the EU integration process in this area as well.Footnote ⁴⁸

Several Member States National Recovery and Resilience Plans have introduced significant anti-corruption reforms through this mechanism.Footnote ⁴⁹ Amongst them, the case of Romania was, arguably, the EU Member State that took anti-corruption most seriously, as a result of being subject since its accession to the EU to the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism – the very first EU conditionality EUFootnote ⁵⁰ – and being its constitutional moments of change deeply connected to anti-corruption instances. Bogdan Iancu argues that such specific traits have had a rather polarising effects on both the legislative and judiciary branches.Footnote ⁵¹ His contribution maps the continuation of these traits finding that they ultimately create tensions for the liberal-democratic order and its preservation. Risk-management and EU normativity clash as the EU’s prior focus on using anti-corruption as a risk reduction factor – specially in the use of EU funds – appears now incompatible with EU’s own normative demands as exemplified in the dialogue (or conflict) between the Romanian judiciary and the Court of Justice regarding the statutes of limitations.Footnote ⁵²

Thirdly, anti-corruption became symbol for the EU geo-political stance and a shield against external interferences. The political challenges arising from the invasion of Ukraine have marked a third transformation, bringing the vitality of EU and Member States democracies into sharp focus. The Commission recommendations in the Rule of Law Reports now include measures that prevent foreign interference and safeguarding the integrity of political processes.Footnote ⁵³ As such, anti-corruption has now a political meaning, indicating what type of political framework the EU is standing for, in opposition to other regimes and their threats, be them external or internal. The “Qatargate” scandal – an attempt by Moroccan and Qatari governments to influence the EU Parliament through bribery – demonstrated the EU’s vulnerability to foreign influence. The latest developments mark the EU’s more proactive deployment of the anticorruption ideal. Indeed, anti-corruption also features prominently in EU external relations law where the EU has through conditionality and technical assistance measures, sought to promote rule of law principles in its neighbourhood and the candidate countries in order to prevent corruption and export its values.Footnote ⁵⁴ Recently, the EU has attempted to limit the interference in its internal affairs through individual targeted sanctions of individuals involved in corruption.Footnote ⁵⁵

Through individual targeted sanctions, the EU is – while still lacking a mechanism such as the Magnitsky Act in the USFootnote ⁵⁶ – seeking to use these measures to punish corruption. This shift has, in part, also been inspired by a desire to limit foreign interference. Intelligence, law enforcement and national security operatives that have previously treated corruption as a matter of organised crime began shifting towards understanding of corruption as a national security threat.Footnote ⁵⁷ Thus, it comes as no surprise that the new EU Directive on Combatting Corruption is a part of the EU strategy for the security (2020–2025).Footnote ⁵⁸ Not much attention has been paid to the adoption and development of anti-corruption instruments at the EU level, as well as their mobilisation internally and externally. Unilateral targeted sanctions that, in spite of the due process issue that they raise, have been mobilised as a foreign policy tool and a penal device, in place of a criminal sanction. Analysis of the phenomenon of corruption regulation at the EU level, limits itself to the understanding of corruption as a problem of economic crime, an issue linked to the fraud affecting the EU’s financial interests,Footnote ⁵⁹ and an aspiration concerning the standards to be abided by some of the Member States and candidate countries.Footnote ⁶⁰

The analysis of CJEU jurisprudence which forms the core of the analysis offered by Francesca Finelli and Celia Challet takes account of an innovative approach to anti-corruption carried out through the EU’s sanctioning regime against Russian businesspersons. Although this regime is not, strictly speaking conceived as an anti-corruption tool stricto sensu, its nature and the specific targeting it focused on following the 2014 occupation of Crimea by Russian forces testify of its dual nature both punitive and preventive. If it acts as a de facto punitive measure, it requires a greater test against the rule of law standards than is currently provided. If it acts as a policy measure that seeks to punish those close to Russian President Putin, there needs to be a set of prescriptions that would get one off the list of sanctioned persons. Presently, the measure provides neither. The court practice testifies of the European Council’s willingness to keep certain individuals on the EU sanctions list, in spite of CJEU’s annulments, leading to second or even third listing. While the EU never made such claims, during the period between 2014 and 2024 in which the United States sanctions regime against the Russian businessperson’s regime was in full swing, it openly proclaimed that its intention was also to prevent and limit the usage of assets of Russian firms associated with Putin in foreign interference projects.

V. Key-elements and open challenges of the EU anti-corruption law

Considering the relevance acquired in the constitutional sense, the effects into Member States legal system, and the extended scope of application, anti-corruption is maturing into an EU domain. This means an EU monitoring and intervention, even when corruption is purely internal to a Member State, implementing measures that are both repressive and preventive, to uphold common standards and ensure the highest level of enforcement. In this scheme, EU anti-corruption law serves as a framework where national anti-corruption systems can be accommodated, creating a structure – made of different elements – which is both a skeleton and an oversight to the national ones, with an “Europeanization” of what were once purely national issues.

Member States may not choose whether to combat corruption: they are obliged to, and they face financial penalties if they do not, in terms of deprivation of expected funding in the Conditionality Regulation if breaches to the rule of law are detected and halting of expected funding in the Recovery and Resilience Regulation if national anti-corruption measures are not enacted. Member States have also limited margin in how to combat corruption, as national systems look necessarily at the consolidated anticorruption toolkit, more intensively and precisely following the rule of law report for the EU Member States, to the extent that now clear “European standard” exist – to be then applied in concrete domestic situations. Through the analysis of the Rule of Law Reports over the period 2020–2025, it appears that the Commission has identified the following elements as pillars of the anti-corruption system: first, the definition of criminal offenses and the rate of investigation, prosecution and sanctions of these offences; second, integrity rules at the national and local levels, including regulations on immunity; third, the establishment, powers and structure of anti-corruption authorities and other administrative bodies; fourth, provisions on transparency, publicity and lobbying. This progressive convergence shows that, despite the diversity of national contexts, there is a core EU anti-corruption law.

First there is the anti-corruption criminal law, which aims to punish those who violate corrupt behaviour. This branch of law deals with corruption post hoc – after it has happened or upon reasonable doubt that it has happened, enacting criminal responsibility of both individual and legal persons.Footnote ⁶¹ National criminal codes recognise corrupt criminal acts as crimes against public administration, property and fraud in public service in accordance with the EU law. Specific criminal acts include and may not be limited to bribery of national, international and foreign officials, extortion, trading in influence, embezzlement, illicit enrichment, obstruction of justice, and money laundering.Footnote ⁶² The EU law criminalises act in this field since the 1990s, not only to defend its financial interest (both EU and Member States) criminalising corruption in the public sector, but also to protect the internal market with the criminalisation of corruption in the private sector.Footnote ⁶³

In particular the definition of corruption – abuse of power for private gainFootnote ⁶⁴ – has a very wide application in national legal systems. As a consequence, states and international organisations adopt different legal instruments to limit such private gain, including the misappropriation of resources, their allocation to individuals connected to the officeholders, and their use in ways that does not conform to the public interest. The primary aim of these instruments is to establish control of corruption by introducing constraints that limit the opportunities for officeholders to engage in corrupt behaviour.Footnote ⁶⁵ These norms also concern also the adoption of advanced investigative tools, the and the revision of procedural rules such as statutes of limitations.

Alberto di Martino looks at the abuse of office, one of the central criminal law offences dealing with public corruption. This offence had an unusual trajectory, starting as a less important offense in the codifications of the Italian Criminal Code in the first half of the 20th century, it has gained a centrality recognised in both the UNCAC and Italian criminal practice with more than 7,000 investigations launched in the past decade. These investigations were met with little success, instead they have served as a kind of deterrent that limited the engagement of public officials to enter into signatures of deals could have been viewed as risky. Thus, abuse of office, instead of leading to a clear line of responsibility of public officials began to be viewed as punishment for decisions that were more bad policy than intentionally committed criminal offences. In a discussion whose importance goes beyond the Italian borders as similar instances of prosecutorial overreach considering this offence have been reported in other European jurisdictions, di Martino proposes a fine line that the enforcement practices in EU Member States should follow. From this perspective, criminalisation safeguards the legality of governmental action as a precondition for accountability and as a structural guarantee of democratic legitimacy and institutional impartiality.

The second main way through which the EU establishes control of corruption is by preventing the concentration of power. To that extent, anti-corruption regulation requires the separation of powers, which includes the independence and interdependence of the three main branches of government: the executive, the legislature and the judiciary.Footnote ⁶⁶ Within those three branches of government, the legal systems aim to promote transparent decision-making and accountability to prevent broad discretion, allow access to information for the public, prevent undue influence on decision-makers, and reveal how the decisions are made, sometimes creating specialised anti-corruption agencies dealing with these issues.Footnote ⁶⁷ These rules protect public integrity, and accountability.Footnote ⁶⁸ They serve primarily a preventive purpose.Footnote ⁶⁹

At the national level, while it has been noted that the EU now scrutinises the anti-corruption policies of Member States,Footnote ⁷⁰ not much attention has been paid to the emerging institutionalisation enshrined in the strategic documents and the creation of national anti-corruption institutions that the EU Rule of Law Reports demand. Indeed, the autonomy of Member States governments is also reduced on who has to fight corruption as the EU indicates a clear pyramid model with an administrative authority at the top with the requirements of independence, professionalism and autonomy at large. The EU at large follows the preventive anticorruption model, emerged after the failure of the purely criminal model. It enacts preventive tools relying on administrative law toolkit and resorting to constitutional law and administrative law principles revived for this function. It is based on risk assessment, monitoring and coordination of action plans, conflicts of interest rules and assets declaration, code of ethics and anticorruption training.

On the preventive side, there is an increasing emphasis on the establishment of anti-corruption authorities, the implementation of compliance programs for public administrations and the enforcement of integrity rules for public officials. These measures, outlined in the Rule of Law Reports through successive editions, serve as the foundations of a comprehensive EU anti-corruption regime and have shaped European standards in this field. The rules and measures no longer concern merely administrative action, but more broadly, the administrative organisation itself, and whole institutional assets of public powers.Footnote ⁷¹

Particularly, as in other fields, the EU insist on the need to have professional and independent administrative authorities which can manage specific tasks in the fight against corruption as dedicated anti-corruption authority, authority for the public contract award and management, and authorities on the money laundering. Branislav Hock’s paper is focused on this later type of public authority, as money laundering as is often preceded by other criminal offences. Hock questions the usefulness of modern corporation-enforced anti-money laundering regime in the reduction of harm as its open-textured requirements create problems with clarity and credibility of the regime. In turn, this makes implementation a collective action problem, similar to that with many corruption related issues. Still, Hock views the creation of the Anti-Money Laundering Authority as potentially very helpful for anti-corruption efforts as it could improve clarity about politically exposed persons, beneficial ownership and other corruption-related typologies. Specifically, minimum rules on the tracing and identification, freezing, confiscation and management of property in criminal proceedings introduced by the Directive would all benefit from more clarity that effective money laundering enforcement would bring.

Fourth, owing to the expansion of the private sector and its increased role in the public sphere, the rules on public integrity and accountability have been expanded to regulate the private sector constituting another element of modern anti-corruption law. In that sense, the responsibility of private persons and corporations to comply with anti-corruption norms has been expanded to prevent undue influence in the public sphere. Transparency of business registries and beneficial ownership registries has been strengthened to inform the public of the owners of companies that operate in different jurisdictions.Footnote ⁷² Measures to introduce transparent beneficial ownership and the subsequent decision of the CJEU to suspend them have received appraisal.Footnote ⁷³ Certain aspects of the anti-corruption policies in the matter of transparency also deals with foreign interference, such as foreign investment screening, or its link to national security, are also emerging.Footnote ⁷⁴ EU anti-corruption policy now explicitly includes measures aimed at preventing foreign interference and safeguarding the integrity of political processes.Footnote ⁷⁵

Regarding the broader legal and regulatory aspects of specific anti-corruption policies, the Directive on the Transparency of Interest Representation has represented a turning point.Footnote ⁷⁶ Odile Ammann’s paper aims to compare the EU’s approach to lobbying on three different levels: public vs. private, domestic vs. foreign and EU-level vs. Member State lobbying. Centring on the European parliament, her paper investigates the overlaps between lobbying and corruption, finding that the EU’s approach to recent corruption scandals has been to increase transparency. Her article argues that the EU should look at the interlink between lobbying and corruption holistically and adopt a truly integrated regulatory approach to these phenomena. The inspiration for such interlinks should be found in the OECD’s pillars of lobbying regulation that include equality of access and integrity.

Two aspects remain to be further investigated to complete the anti-corruption panoply, and on which the EU could further advance its policies. Alongside this preventive approach, the current academic research on anti-corruption models highlights the relevance of behavioural and cognitive sciences to check how people make decisions, studying the cost-benefit calculation of engagements in corruption in order to exploit the benefits of some human behaviours and limiting the adverse effects of others. Whistle-blower channels and staff-rotation provisions are examples of this kind of measure, which are endorsed at the EU level as well.

This approach adds a focus on the quality of rules rather than just activities, aiming to prevent corruption not only before it occurs but before it can even be conceived. It addresses corruption opportunities created by the rules themselves, whether already in place or in the process of adoption. By examining the “genetics” of corruption, this approach analyses the rules in context, incorporating impact and risk assessments related to corruption in specific areas.Footnote ⁷⁷

Moreover, enforcement is viewed as an integral part of the regulatory framework, with an emphasis on ensuring responsive enforcement. This perspective considers the entire life-cycle of rules – from proposal to implementation – prioritising enforcement and compliance as drivers of regulatory effectiveness. The underlying assumption is that effective rules leave little room for corruption. The law execution – its implementation oriented to the achievement of public goals – is no longer separable from or ancillary to law-making. This is also the rule of law conceptualisation present in the Rule of Law Report, which gives to the execution phase of the law (and to the rule of law principles which govern it) a specific dimension and dignity, and which should be granted by anti-corruption measures: law to be effective needs good legislation but in the same way needs concretising legislation.Footnote ⁷⁸ After all, law is a mean to an end.Footnote ⁷⁹

Enforcement is therefore an essential aspect of the regulation at large, being part of regulatory delivery which is strictly related to intended regulatory outcomes rather than mere compliance: enforcement appears relevant to strengthen the rule of law. ^{Footnote 80} Rules that are valid, enforceable and applicable are characterised by high rates of compliance. Regulation that is of good quality and capable of making rules effective, in the sense of ensuring enforcement ^{Footnote 81} should also be capable of bringing corruption under control. The situation demands the EU legislation be even more effective and efficient in achieving its public policy objectives.Footnote ⁸²

This emphasis on the execution of the law has exposed the EU institutions in the recent years to critics that the rule of law within the EU has taken on a securitarian character, with the EU prioritising the enforcement of the law – particularly its own law, through the principle of primacy of EU law.Footnote ⁸³ This has led to concerns that the whole EU narrative surrounding the rule of law risks becoming a tool of EU authoritarianism.Footnote ⁸⁴ While opinion on this trend vary, the growing and now well-established link between anti-corruption measures and the protection of the rule of law in the EU appears undeniable and unavoidable.