Corruption in public procurement and its impact on the internal market

Key points:

The EESC:

• considers that the Commission must reinstate the EU Anti-Corruption Report;
• stresses that the EU must prioritise evaluating the legislative framework on the integrity of public procurement and its implementation in practice in order to verify whether this framework is consistent with the needs of the fight against corruption;
• supports the European Parliament proposal asking the Commission to prepare an EU global anti-corruption strategy;
• believes that efforts to fight corruption should be better aligned with efforts to safeguard and develop democracy in the EU, since corrupt practices can offer political actors illegal gains and resources to campaign and maintain their clientelism-based support system;
• is convinced that the European public procurement market should have been more advanced in digitisation. It is therefore key that the Commission keep providing national authorities with technical support throughout this difficult process;
• considers that the Commission could assign greater importance to the integrity pacts;
• believes that the cross-debarment system (between European authorities/national institutions/private banks) could be useful for protecting the internal market from misuse of public resources allocated to tenders;
• encourages the Commission and other EU and national institutions to consider worker representation, collective bargaining and social dialogue as key instruments to make anti-corruption effective at all levels;
• encourages all businesses/ employers' associations and social partners to actively pursue an integrity culture and adhere to the best standards available at national and international levels;
• looks forward to the institutionalisation and development of the EU network against corruption and is willing to participate in its work.

For more information please contact the INT Section Secretariat.