Corruption and the lack of rule of law undermine the mutual trust that is underpinning the internal market. The EESC believes that efforts to fight corruption should be better aligned with efforts to safeguard and develop democracy in the EU. Moreover, the EESC stresses that the EU must prioritise evaluating the legislative framework on the integrity of public procurement and its implementation in practice and believes that the cross-debarment system could be useful for protecting the internal market from misuse of public resources allocated to tenders.
Download — EESC opinion: Corruption in public procurement and its impact on the internal market
The Commission’s aim for this non-legislative initiative is to “propose tools on developing open human-centric virtual worlds,” according to the 2023 work program .
Download — EESC opinion: Initiative on virtual worlds
The main objective of this opinion is to deliver, eight years after its official launch, an EESC assessment of the state of play of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a soft-power tool through which China has assumed a new strategic geopolitical position on the world chessboard. In this context, the EESC needs to investigate what impact the BRI can have on the EU's policies such as twin transition, open strategic autonomy, access to critical technologies and critical raw materials, security and defence, TEN-T network, foreign direct investments, EU screening, etc.
Download — EESC opinion: Global battle of offers – from the Chinese Belt and Road initiative to the EU Global Gateway: the vision of European organised civil society
The EESC is a fervent defender of multilateralism and a rules-based world order. Its External Relations Section deals with many topics relevant to the broad spectrum covered by the United Nations and its specialised agencies, while many EESC opinions refer to core international principles and regularly cite the United Nations.
Download — EESC opinion: Strengthening Multilateralism and core international principles for a rules-based order in a rapidly changing world – The importance of Civil Society contribution to the UN system
Download — EESC opinion: Individual and collective energy self-consumption as a factor in the fight for the green and energy transition, and for economic and social balance
