EU Leaders Enter Final Negotiations on Groundbreaking Anti-Corruption Law

The European Union’s leading institutions have entered the final phase of negotiations on a sweeping anti-corruption law that could reshape financial crime enforcement across the bloc.

A reform proposed by the European Commission is currently being debated in ‘trilogue’ discussions involving the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union, and the Commission itself. The final legislation will depend on the consensus reached by these three entities.

Jeroen Blomsma, the European Commission’s Head of Anti-Corruption, emphasized that the primary goal of the proposal is to ensure that “everywhere in the EU, all forms of corruption are criminal.”

“In law, there is a so-called statute of limitations, and when this period is over, the defendant can no longer be prosecuted,” Blomsma explained in a LinkedIn post. “As corruption often goes unnoticed and is complex to investigate, proceedings in this area can take a long time from the moment when they are committed. There are several EU countries where a short statute of limitation leads to the discontinuation of dozens if not hundreds of cases each year.”

A 2023 report published by the European Commission recommended several significant changes to how corruption cases are handled across the EU, with a key objective of standardizing the approach across member states.

One of the most notable recommendations in the report was the introduction of “minimum rules” concerning the statute of limitations in corruption-related cases.

The report suggested that this could involve “minimum common thresholds, or even the removal of the time limit for prosecuting such cases.”

Professor Enrico Carloni, an international anti-corruption expert, commented on the ongoing legislative process, stating that while the Commission’s proposal served as the foundation, the European Parliament and the Council have each put forward different versions of the text reflecting diverging priorities.

“While the text adopted by Parliament greatly enriches the original proposal, the text proposed by the Council is more modest in innovative content and includes significant concessions to member state requests,” Carloni said.

He noted that the future of the European anti-corruption framework now depends on defining a final text that reconciles these differences.

By fLEXI tEAM