Andi Hoxhaj is a lecturer in law and the director of the European Law LLM pathway program at King’s College London. He is the author of “EU Anti-Corruption Report: A Reflexive Governance Approach.”

In 2023, the EU proposed an anti-corruption directive in response to multiple scandals, including Qatargate, Huawei and the Uber Files. The proposal also attempted to address recent backsliding on rule of law, as well as the fact that several EU members have dropped in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index rankings.

Highlighting how corruption continues to plague the EU, the directive’s goal is to standardize the definition of corruption offenses and establish common penalties across the bloc. And to date, in accordance with EU procedure, the proposed bill was presented by European Commission in 2023, and the EU Parliament and Council of the EU amended and agreed on most of its content.

But as of late June, negotiations have been at a deadlock due to three proposals in the directive’s text, which have been the subject of disagreement between members countries. The main sticking point is over the offense of “abuse of office” by public officials, with opponents demanding its reclassification from a criminal to an administrative offense.

Simply put, the anti-corruption directive is at a critical juncture. Questions is, will the bloc finally step up, or will it be business as usual?

Italy and Germany are currently leading the dissent, with support from Hungary, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Their argument is that the provision is vague, overly broad and open to misuse, as it could be used to target and charge public officials in order to create a public show of fighting corruption. They also argue it may discourage officials from working for public administration or approving publicly funded projects for fear of facing criminal prosecution.

Italy itself abolished the offense of abuse of office in 2024, after it had been part of its criminal law for almost a century. So, the provision’s inclusion in the EU directive would require its reinstatement in their state law. Moreover, the reasoning behind Italy’s decriminalization was that the law hindered decision-making at the local and central levels of government, with officials afraid of being charged for allocating public resources. It had also become a politically driven instrument of prosecutorial harassment, with recent figures showing just nine in 5,000 criminal cases resulted in convictions.

Some other EU members support this perspective, but the truth is, changing the law to an administrative offense would make it easier for public officials to engage in clientelism, nepotism and outright corruption, potentially opening the door to more white-collar crime and muddying the waters on possible conflicts of interest.

Right now, the Parliament considers the decriminalization of abuse of office to be a redline, crucial to the bloc’s efforts to consistently combat corruption. This is a major issue in the EU, and until now, it has repeatedly failed to introduce robust legislation to target the problem, let alone effectively enforce it.

That’s why on June 2, 57 civil society organizations published an open letter urging EU leaders to demonstrate genuine political will, setting a higher standard for integrity and accountability across the bloc. They are correct: The EU could make real progress against corruption with this legislation. Whereas a watered-down directive would send the wrong message both to its citizens and the world — particularly to candidate countries, where the EU has made fighting corruption a key precondition for membership.

Or is it one law for the EU, another for EU hopefuls?

The bloc last assessed the impact of corruption in 2014, estimating it costs more than €120 billion a year, with some studies estimating it might be up to €179 billion. And yet, most nongovernmental anti-corruption organizations and indicators suggest corruption is still on the rise in the EU. For example, during the Covid-19 pandemic, nearly all (25 out of 27) EU members “saw an increase in tenders with only one bidder — a crucial sign that the tender may have been rigged in favor of the bidding companies.”

By contrast, Albania’s Special Prosecutor’s Office against Corruption and Organized Crime (SPAK) has charged nearly all its public officials — including former presidents, prime ministers, ministers and mayors — with abuse of office. And it did so under a criminal provision modeled after the former Italian criminal law on abuse of power, as advocated by the EU.

Meanwhile, the U.S.’s suspension of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and dissolution of its kleptocracy units — a major retreat in the county’s global efforts to address corruption — only makes the need for the EU to recognize its role on the world stage more urgent.

EU members must demonstrate true leadership, and challenge the message they’re currently sending: that the EU isn’t serious about fighting corruption within its own walls, while it’s happy to take the moral high ground elsewhere, whether that be in accession talks with Ukraine or considering Albania’s and Montenegro’s EU membership.

EU members must rise to the occasion, adopting a robust anti-corruption directive that will impact the bloc and beyond without further delay.