Strasbourg (MOREL)- The Council of Europe’s Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) in its Compliance Report published today concluded that Slovenia has not implemented fully any of the fifteen recommendations addressed by GRECO to the authorities in the evaluation report of 2018 on preventing corruption and promoting integrity in central governments (top executive functions) and law enforcement agencies. Only one recommendation, that on promoting and raising awareness of integrity matters in the government, has been partly implemented, and the remaining fourteen have not been implemented. See the Compliance report also in Slovenian “Poročilo o izpolnjevaniju priporočil” and in French.
As regards persons entrusted with top executive functions, in spite of some efforts to raise awareness of integrity matters, the participation of such persons in information meetings remains low, and no internal awareness-raising mechanism in the government has been developed in this respect. Several issues have not been addressed, such as increasing the staff and resources and improving the procedure of the Commission for the Prevention of Corruption; strengthening rules on post-employment restrictions and lobbying; widening the scope of asset declarations to include spouses and dependent family members; adopting an overarching integrity plan of the Government and an organisational strategy to manage conflicts of interest. Also, no progress has been made regarding timely publication of asset declarations of ministers and state secretaries’, the substantive checks and publishing of violations in this regard.
As to the law enforcement agencies, some legal amendments have been initiated to the Organisation and Work in the Police Act to improve risk management by further developing intelligence collection to identify corruption-related risks; however, no tangible results have been achieved. Progress is also lacking in ensuring that promotions and dismissals in the police, including top officials, are fair, merit-based and transparent. Some steps have been noted by GRECO in relation to the recruitment and integration of women in the police and promoting this profession among women. Moreover, there is still a need to develop the management of conflicts of interest through advisory, monitoring and compliance mechanisms; establish a reporting obligation and a registry for secondary employment; ensure systemic use of the multiple-eye principle; and strengthen the protection of whistle-blowers.
GRECO calls upon the Slovenian authorities to step up their efforts to implement the pending recommendations. “Considerable progress is necessary to demonstrate an acceptable level of compliance with the recommendations within the next 18 months,” GRECO notes. Slovenia is invited to submit additional information on the implementation of all the recommendations by 30 April 2022.
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The Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) is a Council of Europe body that aims to improve the capacity of its members to fight corruption by monitoring their compliance with anti-corruption standards. It helps states to identify deficiencies in national anti-corruption policies, prompting the necessary legislative, institutional and practical reforms. Currently it comprises the 47 Council of Europe member states, Belarus, Kazakhstan and the United States of America (ends)
