Welcome to the European Parliamentary Research Service podcasts.

Corruption is a major scourge for any society, economy and democratic system,

and we in the European Union are not spared from it.

Want to know how the EU is fighting it? Stay with us.

Bribery, embezzlement, clientelism, nepotism, patronage, influence peddling.

Corruption comes in many forms and ways, and it's as old as the world itself.

But that doesn't make it less of a problem.

No, it doesn't, especially because it undermines the stability of institutions and economic growth.

It fuels organised crime, weakens the rule of law as well as trust in public institutions, and threatens our democracies.

And European citizens are very concerned about it.

According to a July 23 Eurobarometer survey, over 70% of them think it's widespread in their

country, especially in public institutions. But how bad is it really? The real scale of corruption

is difficult to measure. But one thing is sure, there are no corruption-free zones in the EU, although it

affects member states in different ways and to different degrees. So how is the EU addressing

this problem? Since the 1990s, countries around the world have joined efforts to address corruption

together. This has led to the emergence of international laws and

standards adopted by the Council of Europe, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development,

and the United Nations, amongst others. Mechanisms such as the Council of Europe Group

of States against corruption have been developed to monitor implementation of these rules. All 27 EU member

states are individual members of Greco, as the group is known, and the EU has observer status.

Now, while fighting corruption is mainly a national competence, the EU has gradually adopted

laws and instruments to address this problem, both

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