Recent evidence shows that Germany is a laggard on anticorruption policies in Europe. This is acknowledged by OECD, as Germany’s implementation of the anti-bribery convention is no longer convincing, by the Council of Europe, whose GRECO body has labelled Germany’s compliance as unsatisfactory and by the German media and civil society. The new data on transparency and public accountability produced by our centre shows that GRECO is right, and Germany falls below the European average at most public accountability regulations. Moreover, while the EU asks accession countries to have a pro-active policy related to corruption scandals, Germany repeatedly failed to do so. The new government should propose a comprehensive anticorruption policy plan, implement GRECO recommendations on conflict of interest for politicians in full and revive the attempt to make businesses truly responsible for corruption. The new majority in the Bundestag should also move decisively to have anti-corruption institutions truly independent and acting far more decisively and prompt against a large set of practices amounting to systematic undue profit from political connections. The elections winners should propose a comprehensive anticorruption policy plan, implement GRECO recommendations on conflict of interest for politicians in full and revive the attempt to make businesses truly responsible for corruption. The new majority in the Bundestag should also move decisively to have anti-corruption institutions truly autonomous so that investigations are prompt and independent of political considerations. But as the Green Party proposed the only comprehensive plan against corruption this might not happen.
Country: Germany
Germany
Germany is a country with good control of corruption despite modest public accountability arrangements. Except its thick conflict of interest regulation, transparency Is uneven and oversight of potential undue profit by officials is rather low. But the autonomy of bureaucracy and the judiciary form the political factor is high, and progress has been made to reduce administrative burden and increase fiscal transparency. Much more should be done to enforce sanctions against non-compliant companies bribing overseas and a better separation between business and politics domestically. Open government has also progressed quite slowly, and public procurement at sub-national level is not transparent.
EU Aid and the Quality of Governance
Using a panel dataset on 103 developing countries, this paper empirically analyzes the impact of the European aid flows on quality of governance in aid recipient countries. The analysis employs aggregated Official Development Data as well as disaggregated project level data. The results show that while bilateral aid from the largest European donors does not show any impact, multilateral financial assistance from the EU Institutions leads to an improvement in governance indicators. These findings thus suggest that European development assistance can help to promote good governance if aid is allocated at the EU supranational level rather than at the national level of the member states.
EU Aid and the Quality of Governance
Using a panel dataset on 103 developing countries, this paper empirically analyzes the impact of the European aid flows on quality of governance in aid recipient countries. The analysis employs aggregated Official Development Data as well as disaggregated project level data. The results show that while bilateral aid from the largest European donors does not show any impact, multilateral financial assistance from the EU Institutions leads to an improvement in governance indicators. These findings thus suggest that European development assistance can help to promote good governance if aid is allocated at the EU supranational level rather than at the national level of the member states.
The Anticorruption Report. Volume 3: Government Favouritism in Europe
This volume reunites the fieldwork of 2014-2015 in the ANTICORRP project. It is entirely based on objective indicators and offers both quantitative and qualitative assessments of the linkage between political corruption and organised crime using statistics on spending, procurement contract data and judicial data. The methodology used in the analysis of particularism of public resource distribution is applicable to any other country where procurement data can be made available and opens the door to a better understanding and reform of both systemic corruption and political finance. The main conclusion of this report is that public procurement needs far more transparency and monitoring in old Member States, where it is far from perfect, as well as new ones and accession countries, where major problems can be identified, partly due to more transparency and monitoring.This policy report is the third volume of the policy series “The Anticorruption Report” produced in the framework of the EU FP7 ANTICORRP Project. The report was edited by Prof. Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, PhD from the Hertie School of Governance, head of the policy pillar of the project.
Print and e-book versions of all full reports can be purchased here.
Reviews for this publication
“Public infrastructure projects and other types of government procurement almost everywhere in the world suffer from favoritism and corruption, if not outright criminality. The spoils always go to the people with the right connections, wealth, or the willingness to use or threaten violence. This is among the most difficult aspects of governance for scholars to study: those who talk don’t know, and those who know don’t talk. This slim volume summarizes detailed studies of favoritism in Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Turkey, and Ukraine. A final chapter shows how criminal organizations in many countries—including Mafia-like groups in Bulgaria and Italy—infiltrate national and EU-level public spending projects. Each chapter is packed with a remarkably rich set of charts, graphs, and statistical analyses that capture how much corruption exists and how it works. These succinct and eye-opening quantitative estimates of what really goes on beneath the surface of government make for indispensable reading and should straighten out anyone who doubts that the powerful always find ways to reinforce their influence and wealth, even on the “cleanest” of continents.”
Andrew Moravcsik, Professor of Politics and International Affairs, Princeton University in Foreign Affairs
Report on Germany on institutions in public procurement for the infrastructure sector
Germany has the highest public procurement expenditure in the EU, with an average of 370 billion euros a year between 2009 and 2013. The main objective of this report is to shed some light on the inner workings of the German public procurement system by providing a general overview of its historical development, the current trends in procurement spending and assessing potential risks for corruption. Given that Germany has two parallel procurement systems active at the time, one for contracts above the EU thresholds and one for the contracts underneath these limits, each one of them is evaluated separately. The lack of high quality tender-level data for the case of Germany made it impossible to base the risk assessment on objective indicators. Therefore, this report relies on different sources of data to determine the size of the procurement spending in the country, the manner in which it is allocated and the potential risks of corruption. The study concludes that the public procurement system in Germany – especially the one in place for contracts underneath EU thresholds – is vulnerable to corruption given its complex legislation that damages nation-wide competition, the lack of transparency in the awarding process, a clear or unified national legislation and the low utilization of e-procurement platforms.
Open Knowledge Foundation Deutschland
The Open Knowledge Foundation Deutschland (OKF DE) is the German Chapter of the international Open Knowledge Foundation Network (OKFN). It is an independent non-for-profit organisation founded in 2011 and dedicated to promoting open data and open content in all their forms – including public information, publicly funded research and public domain cultural content. It is an international leader in its field and has extensive experience in building tools and community around open material. OKF DE is a Think-and-Do Tank that combines legal expertise and technical know-how to advise government authorities and other organisations publish open data and help potential re-users to engage with it to create innovative new products and services. OKF DE works on technologies that enable greater transparency in public life and new spaces for citizen engagement and runs a variety of projects including www.offenerhaushalt.de, a visualisation of the German federal budget, www.offenesparlament.de, a tracking system for legislative activity in both chambers of the German parliament, and www.fragdenstaat.de, a platform for freedom of Information requests. OKF DE’s team has also contributed significantly to CKAN and Open Spending, a platform to publish, visualize and analyse budget and spending data. The database is a resource for the many individuals and groups who wish to discuss and investigate public financial information, including journalists, academics, campaigners, etc. OKF DE is part of an active global network, which includes Working Groups, Local Groups and Partners in dozens of countries around the world and in 21 EU Member States. OKF DE runs numerous events – from small hands-on policy workshops and code sprints, to large-scale conferences, including Open Knowledge Conference.