Our View: Law is welcome, real test is action

There was a great amount of unwarranted – some might say – fanfare on Friday because parliament had finally passed the law establishing an anti-corruption authority.

It only came more than 60 years after the establishment of the Republic and almost 20 years into EU membership and only took four years of discussion in the end, along with a giant push from Brussels in the form of the first tranche of funding through the Recovery and Resilience Programme to get it done. If this had not been a factor, MPs would doubtless be still wrangling over the contents of the law as they did anyway until they could no longer put it off.

But our politicians and institutions were acting as if they had reinvented the wheel and stamped out corruption simply by virtue of having the law on the statute books when the real test will be in how it is used and how effective it will be.

It all sounds good on paper. Things like this always do. But it’s not that Cyprus has not had the means to go after criminal behaviour in the public service before this. It has always been more the case of a lack of willingness and enforcement.

Justice Minister Stephie Dracou said the new move was “an important step towards restoring the credibility of institutions and the political system,” and guaranteeing transparency.

“We do not expect that corruption phenomena will disappear with the passing of these laws, but now we have the tools to anticipate, spot and fight them, but most importantly to better handle them,” she said.

If implemented correctly, the new anti-corruption body is likely to be very busy. Corruption exists at all levels in Cyprus from Joe Bloggs up to the top offenders. In many instances it’s the only way to get things done due to inefficiencies in the state machinery.

Indeed, in its latest report, Greco, the Council of Europe’s Group of States against Corruption, pointed this out. Its index, which shows Cyprus has fallen since last year, specifically mentions excessive red tape which it said “may increase opportunities for corruption”.

This is a big part of the problem. It may be low-level corruption to call someone you know for a favour, but it is effectively queue-jumping and as long as this too is tolerated by the majority of society, it will ensure the problem of corruption remains endemic.

While the anti-corruption authority may become a top-down tool to go after the biggest offenders, a bottom-up approach is also needed. Getting the public service to operate more effectively could stamp out a great deal of low-level corruption.

It is ironic that while the rejoicing continued over the passing of the new laws, Cyprus very recently received a letter of formal notice from the European Commission because it had not yet correctly transposed EU rules on the fight against fraud to the union’s financial interests by means of criminal law. The deadline to transpose the directive into national law expired almost three years ago.