TOP 10 GRECO QUOTES ON CZECH CORRUPTION (NON)PREVENTION

The Group of States Against Corruption (GRECO), the anticorruption body of the Council of Europe (CoE), has recently published a new Evaluation Report of the Czech Republic, focused on corruption prevention in central governments and corruption prevention in law enforcement agencies.

The report is a great and comprehensive resource on how the Czech government and public institutions in general have been developing anticorruption principles and implementing these in practice in recent years. The report then especially targets "persons with top executive functions" (PTEFs).

The report is quite technical, regardless, there are great insights scattered across the document. That being said, here are my top 10 quotes from the first part of the report (focused on PTEFs) made by GRECO's evaluation team (GET), with my humble attempt at some professional/contextual commentary.

Let's get going.

10. ON PUBLIC PERCEPTION OF CORRUPTION

"85% of respondents living in the Czech Republic think that corruption in Government is a big problem (EU average: 62%) and, with 57% of respondents having used personal connections for public services in the previous 12 months, the Czech Republic has the highest score in the EU (EU average: 29%)."

This is not GET's own finding but rather a reference to the Global Corruption Barometer 2021 published by Transparency International .

Still, I consider such statement highly relevant and quite distressing as we are way, way above the EU average in percentage of people using personal connections for public services. Us Czechs seem to really know how to utilize our connections to get favourable treatment by public instutions.

Such finding only stresses the importance of a systematic and modern, technology-driven approach to the issue of conflicts of interests (COI) as research indicates that if there's a potential COI, it will likely materialize sooner or later when somebody comes knocking on your door.

9. ON INTEGRITY AWARENESS & PROMOTION

"The GET notes that, in the absence of rules of conduct targeting PTEFs, there are no awareness activities available to them on integrity-related matters, apart from the advice provided by the Conflicts of Interest and Anti-Corruption Department of the Ministry of Justice, which focuses mainly on disclosure obligations."

Boiling the wide-ranging issues of integrity and transparency of public officials and anticorruption measures to disclosure obligations is inadequate, especially from the perspective of a government at least seemingly trying to communicate its commitment to distinguish itself from its opposition whose leader has been routinely criticised for potential or existing COIs and even tried (and acquitted) at court for potential EU subsidy fraud.

The website of the Ministry of Justice focused on anticorruption matters presents several core documents, mainly the Government Conception on Fighting Corruption from 2023 to 2026 and the Action Plan for Fighting Corruption for 2023 and 2024.

Both documents place little attention to communication, promotion and raising awareness with respect to COIs, Codes of Conduct or anticorruption in general, only specifically pointing out such activities with respect to judges, public prosecutors or public sphere employees.

With respect to education activities, the website also offers a presentation template for anticorruption training to be used by internal lecturers within respective institutions.

The presentation deals with the issue of COIs in 3 slides.

Yep, 3 slides seem to be enough awareness content by the Ministry of Justice.

8. ON REGULATION OF LOBBYING

"There are currently no legally binding rules regulating the relationship between lobbyists and the executive, even though the regulation of lobbying has been the subject of long-term public and expert debate and of several unsuccessful legislative attempts since 2009."

I don't have much to add to this personally except that this must be SOME DEBATE that's taking 15 years without tangible progression.

Still, it must be noted that the Ministry of Justice recently informed that the government has approved the lobbying law proposal that now has to be approved by both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate.

The one aspect of the law proposal that I'm really curious about specifies that the declarations of lobbyists should be publicly available to allow for "easy public control of the content of such declarations".

As will be noted below with respect to PTEFs declarations, maintaining public access to some registers has been quite the challenge for the ministry in the last few years.

7. ON AD HOC COI DECLARATIONS

"The GET welcomes that the ACI contains a duty to declare ad hoc conflicts of interest. However, there is room for improvement regarding this rule in several respects. First, it covers only ministers and deputy ministers and not ministers’ individual advisers. Next, the declaration only applies in the context of meetings, while ad hoc conflicts of interest may occur in many other aspects of PTEFs’ activities. Moreover, this declaration is made only for informative purposes, and it does not prevent the person concerned from participating in the meeting or from voting. The declaration is recorded in the minutes of the meetings but as those of the Government are not public and the Ministry of Justice has no competence to control the fulfilling of this obligation, its usefulness is limited. The GET was informed during the on-site visit that this provision is not often used in practice."

In plain language – there are legislative rules, but they only apply to some people in certain situations. And it doesn't really matter anyway since adhering to the rule cannot be verified and we kinda openly admit to this.

Am I the only one baffled by such honesty on one side and admitting your own incompetence on the other?

6. ON INCOMPATIBILITIES OF FUNCTIONS

"The rules on incompatibilities are scattered over many different legal texts and their details vary. As there is no general concept of incompatibility of functions, every time a new institution is set up, a list of incompatibilities is created. These are often made up for the occasion or copied from other laws, which leads to discrepancies among different legal texts. It also makes it very difficult to have an overview of the applicable rules, including for the persons who have to apply them. The accumulation of functions by PTEFs was signalled to the GET as a problematic area during the on-site visit, as it appears that many ministers sit on the boards or councils of private companies, sometimes related to their ministerial portfolio."

The Czech public sphere has a long history of politicians accumulating numerous functions and having trouble deciding which of their positions should command most of their attention. A year-old article even states that almost two thirds of Czech members of the Parliament also hold position in regional governments.

The fact that, despite having so much experience with this, we have not been able to come up with a unified set of rules applicable to PTEFs further illustrates how much (or, more precisely, how little) attention/importance has been attributed to this issue by one government after another.

5. ON MINISTERS' ADVISERS

"Ministers’ individual advisers work under different statuses and that there are no clear and common rules governing their engagement and employment."

This is a problem and a shame. Per recent media articles from the last year, ministries spend around 150 million CZK (roughly 5.9 million EUR) each year on various external advisors. Not exactly a sum to be neglected in my opinion.

The articles also delve into various identified minister-adviser relationships, with interesting examples such as a minister employing an adviser for management of his personal website or ministers employing their party/coalition colleagues.

I could understand partial need for some flexibility as the nature of an advisory postion can vary substantially. Absence of any common framework points to a "divide and conquer" approach used by the ministers with no checks and balances in place.

4. ON PUBLIC ACCESS TO ASSET AND OTHER PTEFs' DECLARATIONS

"The GET discussed at length during the visit the recent change in the modalities for access to PTEFs’ declarations, further to the Constitutional Court’s decision ruling out the publication of the declarations on the grounds that it would interfere disproportionately with the right to respect for private life. This change has raised questions and concerns from representatives of the media and civil society, all the more so since the data accessed may only be used to check for possible violation of the ACI and not for other purposes."

See also points 8, 3 and 2.

I just think you can't have it both ways, especially in a matter like this.

On one side, there's claims about transparency and how the government invites public access to information.

On the other, claims circling around privacy and "respect for private life" go against the transparency principle, and in many cases prevail.

Get your stuff together, public institutions. Either you want to be transparent, or you want to protect the privacy of your political representation.

3. ON VERIFYING DECLARATIONS' CONTENT (1/2)

"The Central Register of Declaration (CRD) automatically checks if a public official did not submit a declaration on time. The content of the declarations is reviewed by the Unit of the Register of Declarations of Public Officials of the Conflicts of Interest and Anti-Corruption Department of the Ministry of Justice, which employs 11 persons. Two of them are tasked with the verification of declarations, which are reviewed when selected at random or upon report. Employees compare the content of the declaration against several public registers, such as the Land Register, the Business Register, the Register of Motor Vehicles, the Register of Beneficial Owners, etc."

I find this quote very interesting as it sheds a little light on how declarations made by PTEFs are verified. As stated, this is done by 2 people who compare data in declarations with data openly available in other registers. I only wonder how this is done exactly – what tools are used, what level of automation does the process contain right now, whether anybody ever considered that there are other registers besides the Czech ones (would it really be at all surprising if PTEFs had assets registered elsewhere?) etc.

2. ON VERIFYING DECLARATIONS' CONTENT (2/2)

"The GET learned from its discussions on site that the system of reviewing declarations is mostly geared towards checking that declarations are submitted on time. The system is largely automatic and it does not prioritise declarations of PTEFs or of persons who are considered more at risk from an integrity perspective. Two employees of the Conflicts of Interest and Anti-Corruption Department of the Ministry of Justice are tasked with verifying flagged declarations. This appears wholly inadequate to the GET, considering that around 30,000 officials submit declarations and around 2,000 of those do not submit them on time. The verification consists in cross-referencing data contained in the declarations with data from public registers, but the Department does not have access to all necessary registers in the economic sphere. Due to this severe understaffing, the Department relies solely on reports from the public to proceed with the verification of possible problematic declarations. The recent restriction of public access to declarations highlighted above (see paragraph 141) could dry up this source of information and further hamper the already weak substantive control of declarations."

And now I get my answer to the previous point. The only thing that is really constantly verified is wheteher a declaration has been filed on time. Cause that "really" is the most important aspect of these declarations.

And as for their content – 2 people are supposed to verify tens of thousands of declarations? I could maybe believe that if there was a highly sophisticated system and modern tools in place where data would be gathered and analyzed automatically. But I'm pretty sure there's not.

Claiming that a ministerial department responsible for this agenda "relies solely on reports from the public" is then especially unnerving given the restrictions placed on access to declarations (see point 8). And I cannot think of a single reason why a goverment agenda should be secured by members of the public.

1. ON COI, DECLARATIONS, ADVISORS AND "CLOSE PERSONS"

"In the GET’s view, it is necessary to increase the transparency on several aspects of the declaration system. First, it notes that ministers’ individual advisers are not subject to declaration duties. It recalls GRECO’s long-standing position that ministers’ advisers are subject to similar integrity risks as other PTEFs and should therefore be subject to the same disclosure regime. The GET also notes that the declarations do not extend to the assets, activities and interests of spouses and dependent family members. However, such information may be of relevance when identifying possible conflicts of interest."

Two major issues. Advisers are not subject to declaration duties and these do not extend to spouses and dependent family members.

I've been researching COIs for years and I never understood why on Earth we would not consider potential COIs not only of PTEFs themselves, but also those in their inner circle.

The idea that we still consider COIs as relevant only when they apply to PTEFs themselves should not make any sense to anyone understanding power dynamics. Especially then a country whose former Prime Minister's career has been destroyed by a mistress with shady dealings and abuses of power.

How to sum all these up?

I'm not trying to say that the government does not do anything with respect to its anticorruption strategy. But the findings presented by GRECO and highlighted in this article point to, in my point of view, serious deficiencies our anticorruption legislative and measures have, whether they concern legal texts, technology utilization, staffing or communication.

My only hope is that such findings will be treated very seriously and with ample attention by the government and its top PTEFs.

Because I don't need to hear that the government is fighting corruption anymore.

I need to see it.

And see it through continuous and systematic development of all of the deficiencies dealt with above