Cyprus concedes more needs to be done on Greco recommendations

More needs to be done to implement the recommendations of the Council of Europe’s Group of States against Corruption (Greco), the state Law Office has said, but it was satisfying that the country had not been ranked as ‘not satisfactory’ when it came to compliance.

“It is encouraging that Cyprus had not been judged at this first stage of compliance as being ‘globally unsatisfactory” while most of the member-states whose compliance reports were examined as part of the 80th Greco plenum were judged as globally unsatisfactory,” the Law Office said.

According to Greco, Cyprus has satisfactorily implemented only two of the 16 recommendations contained in an evaluation report. Of the remaining recommendations, eight have been partly implemented and six have not been implemented, a compliance report published on Thursday said.

The report focuses on corruption prevention in respect of members of parliament, judges and prosecutors.

“Greco notes that further significant material progress is necessary to demonstrate an acceptable level of compliance with the recommendations within the next 18 months,” the report underlines.

The compliance report assesses the measures taken by the authorities of Cyprus to implement the recommendations issued in the Fourth Round Evaluation Report on Cyprus, which was adopted at Greco’s 72nd Plenary Meeting, on July 2016.

As regards preventing corruption in prosecution service, the Law Office said out of the four recommendations only one had not been implemented, which provided for the reinforcement of independence and the prosecutors’ ability to carry out their duty in a more autonomous way.

The Law Office said the bill on the autonomy was before the government.

 

 

 

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.