26/10/2026
The United States has left another international body. On 28 September 2026, Washington told the Council of Europe that it will leave GRECO, its anticorruption monitoring body, from 1 January 2027. No state has ever chosen to leave GRECO before. Russia lost its membership when it was expelled from the Council of Europe in 2022, while Belarus’s membership was also suspended. The Council of Europe “remains open to resuming cooperation with the United States in the future in support of shared efforts to prevent corruption, strengthen integrity and uphold the rule of law”.
For decades, U.S. pressure was a main driver of international anticorruption standards. That pressure is now weaker and weaker.
This raises a question for Europe: can the EU step up when it is not a full member of GRECO itself?
All EU Member States are in GRECO and are reviewed by it, however the EU and its institutions are not. The EU became an observer in 2019 but is not a member. In October, GRECO President David Meyer said that fuller EU participation would close the gap with Member States, all of which GRECO already evaluates.
The result is uneven. National governments are checked twice, by GRECO and by the Commission’s Rule of Law Report. The EU institutions, whose credibility depends on the standards they ask of others, have no comparable outside review of their own.
The idea has been around for a long time. In 2012, the Commission proposed a two-step route, starting with participant status and possibly leading to full membership. It also noted that EU institutions have specific features that differ from state institutions. Some governments raised legal concerns too. Hungary’s justice minister said any move must respect the division of powers between Member States and the EU.
What Qatargate revealed about EU oversight
The Qatargate scandal exposed how little independent scrutiny the EU institutions face. Transparency International EU criticised the EU institutions for policing themselves, and argued that independent external oversight was needed. The Ethics Body that followed has not closed that gap. Transparency International later noted that it is mainly meant to set common minimum standards, not to act as a watchdog. LobbyControl’s 2024 report reached a similar conclusion: the reforms after Qatargate have not fixed the underlying problems in the EU institutions.
In July 2024, Prof. Alberto Alemanno co-signed an open letter to Commission President von der Leyen with Transparency International EU, asking that the Ethics Body get the resources and powers to monitor and enforce the rules. These instances show that the EU’s own tools still depend largely on the institutions overseeing themselves. That is where GRECO comes into play. Membership would add something the Ethics Body cannot: an external review of the EU institutions.
So, can the EU step up?
The tools to prepare for membership already exist. BridgeGap’s EU Compass maps EU directives against UNCAC and national law. EuroPAM compares EU institutions and Member States on preventive rules, such as conflict of interest and freedom of information. The main missing piece is political will, which GRECO’s president described in 2024 as “a question of will”.
If the EU wants to lead on anticorruption while the U.S. steps back, the clearest first step is to accept the same review it asks of its Member States.