The EU for Integrity Action for the Eastern Partnership is a unique partnership of three organsations EU, OECD Anti-Corruption Network for Eastern Europe and Central Asia (OECD/ACN) and Open Government Partnership to prevent and combat corruption and promote integrity in Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, the Republic of Moldova, and Ukraine)

OECD/ACN for the Eastern Partnership – the OECD component of the Programme focuses on the following three objectives:

• Strengthening evidence-based anti-corruption policy development and implementation of anti-corruption reforms;
• Reinforcing law enforcement action against high-level corruption;
• Strengthening integrity in specific corruption-prone sectors: education and business.

News 

20 May 2021 (16:00 CEST) Advancing the Integrity Reform Agendas in the Eastern Partnership: High-Level Launch of the EU for Integrity Programme. For registration and more information please visit here. 

Strengthening evidence-based anti-corruption policy development and implementation of anti-corruption reforms

To strengthen implementation of evidence-based anti-corruption reforms in EaP countries the OECD/ACN will develop performance indicators for 13 Performance Areas (PAs) and will assess EaP countries annually using its robust peer review procedure under Istanbul Anti-Corruption Action Plan (IAP). The indicators with clear and tailored benchmarks, developed through wide consultation, will form a basis for standardised, consistent and transparent assessments and higher stakeholder engagement.

This will mark a major change from the previous rounds of monitoring under IAP where performance was measured individually for each country against its own earlier performance. The performance indicators will allow comparison and will further increase peer pressure for the implementation of anti-corruption reforms.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) will be annual data collection tool for the whole OECD/ACN region to analyse anti-corruption trends and identify strong and weak performance points in areas, where consistent and comparable data can be gathered.  The analysis will be reflected in the annually Regional Outlook reports.  

For more information, please read the Anti-Corruption Performance Indicators and the Overview and Procedures for the pilot monitoring. 

Reinforcing law enforcement action against high-level corruption

To reinforce law enforcement action against high-level corruption in EaP countries the Programme will build on the experience of the OECD Law Enforcement Network (LEN). The LEN organises meetings on an annual basis. These meetings gather law enforcement officials involved in investigation and prosecution of corruption cases – including prosecutors, criminal and financial investigators, detectives, criminal analysts. The meetings will practice interactive networking activities and will be confidential in nature. However, when appropriate some parts of these meetings will be open to other relevant participants. OECD/ACN will create a special EaP-EU working group, develop cross-country studies on high-level corruption and matrix of high-level corruption cases. 

Strengthening integrity in specific corruption-prone sectors: education and business

To strengthen integrity in specific corruption-prone sectors: education and business in EaP countries the Programme will build on the Business Integrity Group (BIG) by providing annual meetings, under the Business Integrity Roundtable Series. The purpose of these meetings is to help its member states promote ethical business conduct in the region. The BIG will be a forum for public or private sector representatives including business ombudsperson, anti-corruption collective actions and other stakeholders to share experience, good practices and find mutual solutions in line with the international trends. This will open an immense opportunity to the EaP countries to learn from their peers, members of the EU, the OECD and other regions.

Under this objective, the Programme will conduct business integrity surveys by collecting data from the public and private partners based on standardised questionnaires, and elaboration of comparative cross-country report on progress achieved. The results of these surveys will be used as an input for the cross-country study that will analyse the progress and challenges and will develop policy recommendations for follow-up actions. 

More information on OECD/ACN Business Integrity efforts 

Opening remarks by Angel Gurría for the High-Level Launch of the EU for Integrity Programme for the Eastern Partnership

Contact

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