On 12 August 2019, the Council of Europe’s Group of States Against Corruption (GRECO) published its fourth round evaluation report on Germany. A summary of the report is available here. The report in German can be retrieved here.

GRECO found an “overall very low level of compliance” with recommendations dating from 2015. Only three of eight recommendations were implemented satisfactorily, three were partially implemented, and two were not implemented at all.

While GRECO welcomes the fact that all ministries now publish comments from stakeholders in the private sector and civil society on legislative initiatives, it also criticizes the lack of further progress on the part of the German federal parliament (Bundestag) concerning the following:

• Improvement of transparency of the parliamentary process;
• Further regulation of conflicts of interest;
• Effective supervision and enforcement of the different rules of conduct for the members of parliament.

As regards judges, GRECO in general welcomes the measures taken by the Federal Constitutional Court and another federal court to improve the transparency and monitoring of the judge’s secondary activities. Nevertheless, as the measures are limited to these courts, GRECO remarks that more progress needs to be done in the context of the transparency and cooperation of secondary activities of judges in general.

Due to its deficiencies in curbing corruption, GRECO will apply a “non-compliance-procedure” to Germany, meaning that the German delegation must provide a progress report on implementing the remaining recommendations no later than 30 June 2020.