EU Support for Rule of Law – Component 3 for Improving the Prevention and Fight against Corruption

The main goal of the component of this 5-year long IPA 2020 project (January 2021 – January 2026) is to provide strategic and methodological support to the Commission for Prevention of Corruption and contribute to the independence, effectiveness, and efficiency of its mandate and operations.

Support will be provided to the Commission in the enforcement of regulations regarding lobbying and restriction of gifts. Since a new Law on Lobbying was adopted in June 2021, the project will support the SCPC in the development and implementation of by-laws, awareness raising activities as well as establishing an electronic registry of lobbyists. Some of these activities are not limited to the SCPC but also include lobbyists and lobbied public bodies.

Another project activity is directed towards improved control and verification of assets declarations submitted by elected and appointed public officials, including members of Parliament. This activity will be supporting the digitalization of this process and provide on-the-job training with the aim to further develop and modernize methods and processes in the SCPC.

Furthermore, the project will cooperate with the SCPC and other relevant institutions on improving the transparency of financing of political parties and election campaigns. One of the planned activities in this area is the establishment of a web platform for submitting and publishing all the required reports, which will enable unified work processes and templates for financial reports and simplified registration and submission of reports, and thus improved transparency of the reporting. This will provide a solid database and information for the SCPC to fulfil its competencies in monitoring, handling complaints, and sanctions and ultimately prevent corruption in politics.

Recognising that interoperability and modern ICT support are crucial for implementing all of the planned activities and achieving the expected results, the project has been researching and looking into implementing a data analytical tool. More specifically, an e-tracker system, similar to the Slovenian Erar, which is an online tool for making data of the public sector entities’ cash flow publicly available. This system will support many of the SCPC’s mandates and tasks, such as preventing corruption in public procurement but also monitoring and control of lobbying and conflict of interests.

As part of the support to professional development of the employees working in different state and independent institutions on topics related to anti-corruption, the project is sponsoring a Master of Arts program in combatting corruption and building integrity at the International Anti-Corruption Academy (IACA) in Laxenburg, Austria. In total, the project will sponsor 12 students employed in selected institutions in the public sector.