Fighting impunity: Casa for stronger EU anti-corruption laws

We caught up with MEP David Casa on his latest work on the combatting corruption directive. It’s a tough task but one that is necessary, he said. 

 Is the EU competent to tackle corruption?

Corruption is a top concern for people across the EU. And it makes sense for them to look to the EU when national institutions seem corrupt or captured. Of course, it is not the EU’s main task to swoop in and lock up criminals and the corrupt. That remains the job of governments.

But a limited competence does not mean that we cannot have minimum standards for corruption offences across the European Union. Not only because it makes sense, but because Member States have all signed up to the UN Convention Against Corruption.

And with our negotiations on the new directive, we are holding them to their commitments.

What is going to change with a directive against corruption?

As of now, EU bodies already intervene in a few ways. The Commission constantly evaluates Member States’ compliance through its rule of law reporting. The European Parliament is even more proactive through its specific missions, debates and resolutions.

But when it comes to fighting crime, there is the involvement of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office and agencies like Eurojust to actively prosecute or facilitate investigations into crime, especially when they involve Union funds.

For active and passive bribery, all Member States are bound by EU law. But there is a discrepancy when it comes to other crimes related to corruption, like misappropriation, trading in influence, obstruction of justice. In some Member States, these don’t exist. In others, there are varying definitions and limitation, and penalty periods.

This makes it especially difficult for cross-border cases, leaving open loopholes that hamper enforcement. These are the loopholes we want to close.

Will the EU be quicker to condemn corrupt governments?

We are working on making the toolkit against corruption more robust. But the EU will never be the first in line to address corruption at a national level.

What we are working on now will give the EU competence to scrutinise the way that Member States transpose the directive. It will create a guarantee against backsliding, which we are seeing most egregiously in Slovakia. And it opens the door to more scrutiny over the way governments tackle corruption in practice.

Because the negotiating process is still ongoing, I am uncomfortable delving into too much detail on what will and will not be in the final law. Suffice it to say that the Parliament is defending its mandate tooth and nail to obtain the strongest law possible.

When do you envisage negotiations concluding?

We made very good progress with the Poles to understand the positions of the co-legislators, and to understand the way forward on swathes of the law. But the Parliament has red lines when it comes to having as strong a law as possible.

We understand that many of the proposals in the directive are unprecedented at an EU level and they will pose significant challenges for Member States. But nobody wanted to conclude the negotiations prematurely. So, we will continue with the Danes.

What are your priorities with this directive?

I want a strong core of offences in the directive to have a common minimum standard for what we consider the major corruption offences.

Prosecutors should have a reasonable period of time to investigate complex cases, and judges should have the most latitude possible to decide on punishments. So, penalty and limitation periods need to be sufficiently ambitious.

This is the starting point to be able to have an effective toolkit against corruption. Already what we have on the table is a massive step in the right direction from what we currently have at an EU level. But this is also a directive that addresses impunity. We have a strong mandate to demand more.

What will change in Malta?

Progress against corruption has been painfully slow. The Commission knows this too, and it is a chief concern in the latest report on the rule of law in Malta.

We are fighting to have specific obligations in the directive to have well-resourced institutions tasked with investigating and prosecuting corruption, which I hope will act as another check against abuse of power and impunity. Not to mention that our statutes against corruption will become stronger.