The Council of Europe’s Group of States against Corruption of the Council of Europe (Greco) said on Wednesday that Cyprus has shown progress in making political financing more transparent and toughening laws against political corruption though more needed to be done.
In its second interim compliance report, Greco said Cyprus has made tangible progress in terms of the pending recommendations since the adoption of the first report.
“Cyprus has so far implemented satisfactorily, or dealt with in a satisfactory manner, six of the eight recommendations contained in the Third Round Evaluation Report, and the two pending recommendations have been partly implemented.”
Greco welcomed indications that both political parties and election candidates are now under obligation to submit specific reporting of all income and expenditure related to their election campaigns and that these reports are to be made public.
The organisation also said that the election income and expenditure accounts, whether from political parties or election candidates, are required to be submitted to the auditor-general, and acknowledged that the system has been “considerably improved.”
“Some shortcomings remain, however, such as the lack of obligation for election candidates to disclose the identities of donors exceeding a certain threshold,” the report said.
Greco said it would also appear that “a more uniform legal framework for the criminalisation of corruption could possibly be underway with the establishment of a national strategy and an action plan under the authority of the Ministry of Justice and Public Order.”
A new legal framework in respect of corruption offences has long been advocated by Greco as it would be an important achievement, as compared with the current “patchwork legislation”, made up of provisions contained in various laws and in two international treaties, the report said.
It noted that five years after the adoption of the Evaluation Report, Cyprus has achieved very positive results.
Greco concluded that the current level of implementation of the recommendations is no longer “globally unsatisfactory”.
It asked the head of the Cypriot delegation to provide a report on the measures taken to implement the recommendations still pending, by September 30, 2017 at the latest.
