Towards the first EU anti-corruption law?
Last month, the European Parliament approved the EU anti-corruption directive, which would create the first EU-wide criminal-law framework to combat corruption once it is formally adopted by the Council and enters into force.
This directive is long overdue: almost 70% of EU citizens consider corruption to be widespread in their country, and estimated yearly losses to corruption amount to €990 billion.
Until now, each EU country has adopted and implemented its own anti-corruption laws, resulting in inconsistent enforcement and discrepancies that facilitate corrupt activity in countries with less stringent approaches. This issue is well illustrated by Italy, where the abuse of office by public officials was decriminalised in 2024.
The first-ever anti-corruption directive
The widespread corruption scandals and inconsistent frameworks across member states underscored the need for a coordinated approach to tackling corruption at both the EU and national levels. The new directive aims to achieve this objective by establishing clearer definitions of corruption offences and penalty levels, strengthening enforcement, enhancing cross-border cooperation, and implementing EU-wide monitoring.
The types of corruption defined by the directive include bribery, misappropriation, obstruction of justice, trading in influence, unlawful exercise of functions, illicit enrichment linked to corruption, concealment, and private-sector corruption. They must be classified as corrupt by the EU countries.
The directive also establishes stronger cooperation between national authorities and EU bodies, including OLAF, the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, Europol, and Eurojust. This stronger cooperation aims to address the cross-border enforcement gap.
Member states must adopt and regularly update national anti-corruption strategies, bringing civil society into the process. They must also carry out risk assessments and build strong frameworks around conflicts of interest, political financing transparency, and integrity standards. On top of this, they must establish dedicated, sufficiently independent bodies to prevent and tackle corruption.
Beyond financial costs
The costs of corruption within the EU stretch far beyond financial losses. At its core, corruption erodes the rule of law. This is especially evident in the way corruption affects press freedom. In many member states, investigative journalists have faced intimidation, legal harassment, and even murder for exposing corrupt networks. It is because of the insufficient and inconsistent enforcement frameworks, which facilitate impunity. The new directive addresses this issue by extending the protections of the EU Whistleblower Protection Directive (EU) 2019/1937 to reports of corruption offences.
As MEP Raquel García Hermida-Van Der Walle (Renew, NL) emphasised, “This law is historic. Corruption has caused journalists to be silenced, citizens to be killed, and lives to be cut short. Behind every statistic is a name, a story, and a future denied. Corruption also drains billions from our economies, erodes trust in government, and undermines democracy itself.”
A step forward
While some MEPs acknowledge that the new anti-corruption rules represent a first step, many argue the directive falls far short of delivering the level of ambition necessary to meaningfully tackle corruption across the EU. As a directive cannot impose strict obligations on enforcement outcomes, the responsibility remains in the hands of EU countries, which have two years to implement the new rules in their national laws, with the possibility to tailor provisions to their national legal systems.
The adoption of this directive will replace a patchwork of older, narrower instruments with a single common framework covering both public- and private-sector corruption, with shared offence definitions, minimum penalties, and common rules on jurisdiction, prevention, investigation, and prosecution. Its real added value, then, is framework-setting. Implementation and day-to-day enforcement remain largely national. The real test of the directive’s impact lies not in its adoption, but in what EU countries choose to do with it.