The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has recognized that corruption remains a major problem in Europe, posing a serious threat to the rule of law, and urged the member states of the Council of Europe to intensify their fight against it.
This is stipulated in a resolution of the PACE entitled “Corruption as a threat to the rule of law,” which was approved during a plenary sitting of the PACE in Strasbourg on Wednesday.
Estonian MP Mailis Reps is the author of the resolution. A total of 119 of 121 MPs voted in favor of the document, one against and one more abstained.
The resolution reads that corruption “jeopardizes the good functioning of public institutions and diverts public action from its purpose, which is to serve the public interest.”
In connection with this, PACE stated that “the Council of Europe, its Parliamentary Assembly and its member states must be in the forefront of the fight against corruption.”
“Corruption subverts public institutions, undermines the law and saps citizens’ trust in their governments. It also has a devastating effect on human rights. States should enact sharper laws against corruption and push for greater transparency in the financial sector, assisting each other in following ‘money trails’ and going after banks who hide or launder dirty money,” reads the document.
The resolution is general – no specific states or examples are mentioned in it. The PACE calls on the member states to ratify the relevant conventions of the Council of Europe, as well as to implement the recommendations of the Group of States Against Corruption (GRECO) and the Committee of Experts on the Evaluation of Anti-Money Laundering Measures and the Financing of Terrorism (MONEYVAL). The resolution also urges parliaments to contribute to the implementation of these recommendations by setting up specific parliamentary scrutiny procedures.
The author of the resolution mentioned specific countries only in the explanatory memorandum to the resolution.
“The 2012 year-end Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), which measures the perceived levels of corruption of the public sector on the basis of expert opinions, places five member States of the Council of Europe beyond the hundredth place out of 174 states listed: Armenia (105); Albania (113); Russia (133); Azerbaijan (139) and Ukraine (144),” reads the document.
In the item of the explanatory memorandum entitled “Corruption in the executive and law-enforcement bodies,” Reps mentions Ukraine in the context of police corruption.
“An example of police corruption includes the conviction, in January 2013, of the former Ukrainian former police chief, Oleksiy Pukach, who confessed to killing a journalist on the alleged instructions of the late interior minister, Yuriy Kravchenko.”
The rapporteur also mentions examples from France, Greece, and Russia.
In the item “Corruption in the judiciary” the author of the resolution also mentions Ukraine in the context of the case of Judge of the Supreme Court of Ukraine Oleksandr Volkov, “who had been removed from office by a method which was held to be in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, which concerned a breach of the right to a fair trial.”
Russia, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Azerbaijan are also mentioned in the item.
Ukraine is also mentioned in the item on the means to fight corruption in the context of the case of former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.
“Much work still needs to be done in this respect, but the case of Ukraine, in which anti-corruption measures have been used for political purposes, also shows that these issues ought to be treated carefully and with circumspection. The ‘abuse of office’ charges brought against the former Prime Minister of Ukraine, Yulia Tymoshenko, is indeed an example to show that tough criminal law provisions intended to fight corruption can also be abused for the politically motivated, selective prosecution of leading members of the opposition,” reads the document.
