Print
See related documents
Recommendation 2105 (2017)
Promoting integrity in governance to tackle political corruption
1. The Parliamentary Assembly, referring
to its Resolution 2170
(2017) on promoting integrity in governance to tackle
political corruption, stresses the need to promote a political and
cultural environment conducive to a corruption-resilient society,
which is a cornerstone of a genuine democracy.
2. The Assembly welcomes Committee of Ministers Recommendation
CM/Rec(2017)2 on the legal regulation of lobbying activities
in the context of public decision making.
3. In order to further strengthen the implementation of existing
anti-corruption standards and recommendations of Council of Europe
member States, the Assembly invites the Committee of Ministers to pay
particular attention, through further research, to the ways in which
corruption was and is embedded in social and cultural values in
individual member States, as these values provide the essential
environment in which anti-corruption initiatives can succeed.
4. Since anti-corruption and integrity strategies are more likely
to succeed when they receive strong grass-roots backing from civil
society and other relevant actors in the fight against corruption,
the Assembly calls on the Committee of Ministers to:
4.1. strengthen dialogue between
civil society and local, national and European institutions by launching
a campaign on integrity and anti-corruption aimed at mobilising
a network of policy makers, experts, scholars, intellectuals, journalists,
non-governmental organisations and students;
4.2. give a prominent role to integrity and anti-corruption
education in the Council of Europe Reference Framework of Competences
for Democratic Culture, targeting primary and secondary schools
and higher education and vocational training institutions throughout
Europe;
4.3. consider including integrity and anti-corruption aspects
in a revised version of the Council of Europe Charter on Education
for Democratic Citizenship and Human Rights Education;
4.4. develop anti-corruption education projects in the framework
of the Council of Europe–European Union joint programme Human Rights
and Democracy in Action;
4.5. pay specific attention to corruption in education, in
particular regarding access to higher education and higher education
qualifications, and study the possibility of a convention on education fraud;
4.6. ask Council of Europe member States that have established
separate specialist anti-corruption bodies to ensure their independence
and provide them with specialist skills, a clear mandate and sufficient
powers, subject to proper checks and balances, in line with Committee
of Ministers Resolution 97
(24) on the twenty guiding principles for the fight against
corruption and the guidelines of the United Nations Convention against
Corruption;
4.7. invite the Group of States against Corruption (GRECO)
to provide a platform for anti-corruption authorities in its member
States in order to gather and discuss good practice and current
challenges in the fight against corruption and the promotion of
integrity in public life, and consider setting up a network at European
level.
5. The Assembly reiterates its call to the Committee of Ministers
to further improve the protection of whistle-blowers by launching
the process of negotiating a binding legal instrument in the form
of a framework convention on whistle-blower protection on the basis
of its Recommendation CM/Rec(2014)7 on the protection of whistleblowers,
taking into account recent developments.