On 10 April 2026, GRECO published its newest report on Estonia. It is the first report of the sixth round of mutual evaluations, which focuses on preventing corruption and promoting integrity at the sub-national level. GRECO assesses in this round particularly the quality of governance and accountability of decentralised governments. The report on Estonia includes the municipalities of Tallinn and Tartu.

GRECO acknowledged Estonia's robust anti-corruption and integrity framework which is also evident at the municipal level. It also identified a number of good practices, such as Tallinn’s and Tartu's public procurement arrangements, their anti-corruption clauses in contracts, e-training courses on anti-corruption and ethics for elected officials and municipal staff, access to official information, and participatory budgeting.

GRECO saw, however, room for improvement in several areas and addressed 12 recommendations to the Estonian authorities. In particular, these recommendations relate to the following:

• Looking at anti-corruption policy and risk management, the rules regarding the appointment of members of the supervisory boards of municipal companies and foundations should be reviewed;
• As far as standards of conduct and ethics are concerned, Tallinn and Tartu should equip counselling channels on integrity and ethics with clear confidentiality safeguards, raise awareness of these channels, and establish arrangements to clearly separate confidential advisory functions from the verification and investigation of integrity breaches;
• In the framework of conflict of interest prevention, practical guidance on the implementation of procedural restrictions under the Anti-Corruption Act and their relationship to criminal liability should be developed, and guidance on the exercise of secondary activities be clarified; measures should also be taken that strengthen the verification of declarations of interests;
• On transparency, access to information and public participation, citizen participation in decision-making should be strengthened, and lobbying be regulated at the central level through a clear framework;
• The subject of control mechanisms, oversight and accountability should be addressed by strengthening the human and administrative capacity of internal audit services, introducing appropriate safeguards for auditor independence and objectivity under rotation requirements, reviewing the protection of whistleblowers against CoE standards, and strengthening guidance, training, access to confidential advice and effectiveness monitoring.

Estonia was invited to report on the measures taken to implement the recommendations by 30 September 2027.