14 May 2025 –
Ana Revuelta Alonso

It is a critical time for civil society organizations engaged in the fight against corruption around the world, including in Europe. Amid growing challenges – ranging from shrinking civic space to increasing political pressure – members and affiliated groups of the UNCAC Coalition have demonstrated remarkable resilience and impact. The 17th Regional Meeting for Europe, held on April 29, 2025, provided a timely forum to celebrate 2024 successes, share strategies, and discuss key developments – including the much-anticipated EU Directive to Combat Corruption, a major opportunity for regional advocacy.

Representing whistleblowers in Serbia and other impactful stories from 2024

European organizations have reflected – in the last Annual Activity Survey – that their most significant successes over the past year involved engaging with governments. These efforts took various forms, but all showed civil society’s active role in strengthening anti-corruption frameworks. Members reported progress in engaging citizens and increasing public pressure which in some cases, prompted legislative changes and concrete government action. These initiatives often included monitoring governments at all levels, and advocating for more transparent, inclusive policy-making.

Some members excel at exposing corruption and at supporting whistleblowers. For instance, the story of Pištaljka was presented by its editor-in-chief, Vladimir Radomirović. Pištaljka is a unique whistleblowing platform from Serbia, in which journalists and lawyers work together to help whistleblowers. As a result of the synergy between legal and journalistic expertise, their submissions to the courts are much shorter and straightforward than usual. This work is complemented by advocacy for legislative improvements in whistleblower protection and by training judges, prosecutors, and authorized public servants to receive reports from whistleblowers.

Vladimir highlighted a recently successful case that involved the janitor of a local council who reported to the prosecutor’s office, claiming that a wastewater treatment plant in the town had not been built as planned. Pištaljka’s investigations and sustained support to the whistleblower, for over eight years, have led to the prosecutor opening an investigation into embezzlement related to the construction of the plant and the disclosure of corrupt deals. Pistaljka eventually found companies registered under the family name of a local political representative. As Vladimir explained,

“When we published this [the evidence of corruption], we were sued, and the synergy of journalism and legal expertise came in. Our lawyers were there and we were able to fight off two out of four SLAPP lawsuits that had been filed against us”.

After eight years of overcoming many political and judicial prosecutorial obstacles, Pistaljka won a Supreme Court case that will now see the whistleblower re-employed by the municipality.

Anti-corruption in war-time: Monitoring Ukraine’s reconstruction

With Ukraine’s reconstruction needs now estimated by the World Bank at  USD 524 billion, and international aid dwindling, Transparency International Ukraine (TI Ukraine) remains focused on civic oversight, transparency, and efficiency to safeguard any available funds. Andrii Borovyk, its Executive Director, shared insights into their approach and some concrete results in two areas.

Firstly, concerning procurement. Over the past years, the organization has advocated reforms in key public institutions and called for aligning public procurement laws with EU standards. Ukraine is now one of the most digitalized governments in the world –  a trend that started with the Prozorro public procurement system. Despite the war, procurement (excluding military equipment) remains open and competitive. TI Ukraine has built a powerful monitoring ecosystem around Prozorro, using open data and business intelligence tools to detect irregularities and drive savings. Andrii said

“Last year, two of our team members monitoring procurement saved EUR 50 million by identifying overpriced contracts. We alerted contracting authorities and oversight bodies, and the prices were reduced before contracts were signed. Our budget is EUR 3 million and we saved EUR 50 million. The efficiency of civic monitoring is obvious.”

Beyond monitoring, the organization also launched the Procuring Entity Index, a tool that assesses the efficiency of public procurement operations using clear, measurable indicators. Any government entity can use it to identify where they need to improve. 

The second example relates to the DREAM system – the Digital Restoration Ecosystem for Accountable Management – co-created in partnership with the Open Contracting Partnership and other civil society organizations. DREAM is a groundbreaking platform that tracks and publishes real-time open data on reconstruction projects. The system allows all stakeholders  to see every step of every project: from planning and budgeting to procurement and implementation. An English version is in development to engage international partners as DREAM also answers a growing concern from foreign donors: “How can we ensure our taxpayers’ money is being used responsibly?”.

In this sense, Andrii reminded that TI Ukraine is not just focused on preventing corruption, but also on helping the government to prioritize in the reconstruction – they have developed a methodology for this – and in addressing inefficiency, often the root cause of citizens’ mistrust. He emphasized that transparency is a means, not an end in itself. TI Ukraine’s approach is guided by the question: “With this publicly available data, what can we do? How will it help civil society and how will it help the government?”. Listening is another critical part of their approach. Civil society organizations often do the work the government cannot do, and they need to find allies within government institutions. While this collaborative model may not work in all contexts, it seems essential for Ukraine’s path forward. Finally, Andrii emphasized that public engagement is key and that, if citizens don’t care about accountability, no rule, binding or not, will work.

Community-based civic monitoring approach: the Italian experience of Libera

Precisely with the goal of engaging citizens, Libera’s work through the Common project stands out as one of Italy’s leading civic monitoring initiatives. Carlotta Bartolucci and Leonardo Ferrante, presented this project and showcased two success cases. 

Libera is a network with hundreds of antennas and local partner organizations in Italy. The Common project empowers communities on the ground to fight organized crime and corruption and promotes community-led oversight of public decisions, using transparency and accountability tools. The methodology revolves around the meanings of the word “common”: harnessing the strength and experience of communities, taking shared responsibility, managing public goods and using common rules. As Leonardo outlined, the approach is simple: Libera identifies a specific local need – such as a major event or public investment – and builds a tailored monitoring and advocacy strategy. The local groups themselves lead outreach and public engagement efforts, while strategic coordination and liaison with Italy’s anti-corruption authority (ANAC) is handled from Libera’s headquarters. All resulting data and tools are open and freely accessible.

Attentive to the concerns of local communities about the impacts of the Winter Olympics that will take place in Italy, Libera joined a group of 20 organizations to push for transparency, accountability, and legality in the delivery of the games and started to campaign in May 2024. A major recent success has been obtaining the creation of a transparency portal on projects related to the Winter Olympics and Paralympics of Milano Cortina 2026. This is the first-ever transparency portal in Olympic history providing access to financial and environmental data. This data now enables civic monitoring efforts and reports to present how many public infrastructure projects have been completed, how much money is being spent, and whether worker protections, environmental safeguards, and oversight are being ensured along the way.

A second innovative initiative, presented by Carlotta Bartolucci, is the creation of the MoMoEU interactive portal (More Monitoring Action in the EU!). Acknowledging that traditional narratives around corruption can alienate younger generations, the digital platform promotes a new, empowering approach to anti-corruption education by offering tools to self-reflect about corruption, videos and games, all guided by a cat mascot.

Advocating for a progressive EU anti-corruption directive

Beyond the ongoing work and successes, a concrete regional advocacy goal we can now rally around is the forthcoming EU Directive on combating corruption. Kush Amin, Legal Expert with Transparency International (TI), gave an account of TI’s efforts to strengthen the draft of the directive since it was released by the European Commission in May 2023 and what he believes advocacy should focus on now. At an early stage, the Commission consulted several organizations, including the UNCAC Coalition. Since the negotiations started between the three leading European institutions, TI has been conveying recommendations to the European Parliament. However, despite successive improvements of the draft, there are aspects that could still become more ambitious.

The directive aims to harmonize legal frameworks across the EU and to tighten criminal law standards in the fight against corruption. TI is currently focusing its advocacy on four main areas, in addition to strengthening preventative elements:

• Push for broader liability beyond senior executives in a failure to prevent offence;
• Establish a framework for the use of non-trial resolutions, especially for foreign bribery cases;
• Include a reference to victims of corruption and demand member states to recognize and notify the victims of any criminal process;
• Secure standing rights for anti-corruption civil society organizations to act as civil parties in criminal cases.

According to Kush, there is a real opportunity for the EU to raise the bar in terms of corruption prevention and criminalization specifically through the directive, and any civil society organization interested in contributing to this advocacy effort is encouraged to get involved. With the Polish presidency of the Council of the European Union starting in January 2025, negotiations of the directive resumed this year with renewed momentum, and is expected to be finalized by June 2025.

Strengthening the UNCAC Coalition in Europe to jointly address the challenges ahead

The inspiring stories and successful strategies shared during the meeting, along with the call to unite around the upcoming EU anti-corruption directive, offered lessons and drive for action. But in today’s difficult environment, members are calling on the Coalition to do even more – to provide a safe, inclusive, and supportive space where civil society can collaborate and confront the shrinking civic space many are facing. Responding to the Annual Activity Survey, members affirmed that being part of the UNCAC Coalition had made them stronger by providing access to expertise, training, and a trusted network for partnerships and advocacy. Now, building on the positive impacts and experience, our shared aim is to keep fostering mutual support and grow into an even stronger civil society network – more connected and effective.