PREVENTING CORRUPTION OF CIVIL SERVANTS IN FRANCE, ROMANIA AND THE NETHERLANDS : A comparative study of law and policy

Abstract

The main question in this comparative analysis is how the legislation and implementation of it compare to each other in these three countries, and how they implement the relevant international legal instruments. The comparison between these countries, the first at this level of detail, is possible and useful because they have considerable differences but find themselves in the same framework of shared EU-membership, civil law structure, and cultural influences.

First the main international instruments, national laws, national institutions and policies are presented. Then follow five chapters, on major corruption prevention topics:

- Codes of conduct - Information and training - Appointments and promotions, screening - Conflicts of interest - Whistle-blowers - Transparency - Monitoring - Use of new technology

Organising information and training for newly recruited public servants and regular training for those in the service should be just as ubiquitous and mandatory, because the rules of conduct that underlie corruption prevention practice are complex and sometimes not intuitive. However, training numbers are low in Romania and France, and in The Netherlands left to individual managers which leads to large differences between similar institutions.

To prevent persons with specific risks or non-matching personal values from entering the public service, institutions in all three countries conduct background checks. The background checks are highly formalised in all three countries, and only cover part of past criminal behaviour to test a candidate’s eligibility. This practice could be improved in all three countries, by diversifying entry barriers based on risk assessments.

Conflicts of interest, that endanger the civil servant by tempting him or her with private interest advantages, are the subject of extensive regulation. Dutch law leaves most of the choices to civil servants themselves, instituting few and mostly open rules and pointing out the positive effects of secondary activities for civil servants. Romania has established the most stringent interdictions, while France has the heaviest procedural framework.

Whistle-blowers are valuable disclosers of otherwise hidden misconduct. They are protected by special laws in each of the three studied countries. In The Netherlands, there is even an entire institution dedicated to their protection, albeit with limited results so far. This study estimates however, that despite the many protective rules, now to be harmonised by a new EU Directive, personal risks for whistle-blowers are so great that they will probably remain a rarity.

Following international standards, the three countries have similar laws to allow access to information held by the civil service. These laws enounce principles and establish procedures, but in reality it seems in all three countries that access is made difficult due to reluctance by the civil service. For real improvement, rules must be made and executed that really embody the principle of ‘everything that is not secret, is public’.

Monitoring and oversight can be done by management, auditors and dedicated auditing authorities within the public sector, and by the media or civil society outside of it. The study finds that public sector monitoring is well established in all three countries, but hardly reports on corruption.

The final chapter of the study is dedicated to the initiatives with artificial intelligence (AI) analysis of large amounts of data that are sprouting everywhere, although concrete deployment of AI to prevent corruption has not been seen yet in the three studied countries.

Finally, the most salient high-level conclusion is that the three countries have different levels of corruption but similar laws and policies, which means that legislation alone cannot explain these differences and that any lawmaker’s claims to step up the fight with more regulation would be weak.