Free Republic

The EU commission scrapped plans to publish a report on anti-corruption efforts throughout EU states. When pressed to explain why, EU commission spokesperson Margaritis Schinas on Thursday (2 February) refused to speculate. […] The Commission was also supposed to look at the EU institutions, but dropped the internal assessment because they “realized that this is something we will have to come back to in a future EU anti-corruption report.” With the 2016 report already past the due date, the transparency campaigners were hoping for a late release. But commission vice-president Frans Timmermans has dashed those hopes. …

The European Commission has decided not to include a chapter on EU institutions in a report on corruption in member states due out next week. The original plan, announced in 2011, was to assess corruption across the member states and within the EU institutions. EU home affairs commissioner Cecilia Malmström is set to release the first bi-annual report on Monday (3 February), around six months later than originally planned. Malmström’s spokesperson Michael Cercone told this website in an email that the commission had considered assessing the anti-corruption efforts of the EU’s own institutions but “realized that this is something we...