EU Conventions against Corruption

EU Conventions


The EU has two legal instruments for fighting corruption: the 1997 EU Convention on the Fight against Corruption involving Officials of the European Communities or Officials of Member States of the EU and the 2003 Framework Decision on Combating Corruption in the Private Sector.

As it can be assumed from their titles, the EU Convention targets corruption involving a public official, while the Framework Decision covers corruption committed entirely within the private sector, that is, between two commercial entities.

The EU Convention is mainly a criminal convention and does not include provisions regarding preventive actions. However, it also contains provisions about the technical cooperation between investigating and prosecutorial authorities of EU member states in cases of cross-border bribery. The main aim of the EU Convention against Corruption was to secure that EU members’ criminal provisions against corruption not only cover bribery of their own public officials, as they originally did, but also bribery involving public officials from other EU countries or public officials of the European Communities. The Convention also prescribes that, for bribery committed by private companies, those companies' management shall be criminally liable for acts of corruption committed by persons under their supervision.

The Framework Decision concerns bribery committed between private parties in a business context. Like the EU convention, the Framework Decision is mainly concerned with sanctioning and not with preventive measures. Aside criminal sanctions for the natural person perpetrating corruption, the Framework Decision prescribes that a legal person (a company) shall be liable for  the acts of corruption perpetrated by people having legal representation, decision or control power within the given legal person. Additionally, companies shall be held liable for acts of bribery committed for their benefit by a person under their authority, when the act of bribery occurred due to lack of supervision. Prior to the Framework Decision, the rationale behind the fight against corruption in the private sector was preventing the distortion of market competition and/or protecting companies’ assets.The EU fight against private corruption is now mainly concerned with the intangible right to loyalty that employees owe their employers.