GRECO report: The fight against corruption shows minimal progress, insufficient for the state
The Group of States Against Corruption of the Council of Europe (GREECE) concluded that Northern Macedonia made some progress in implementing the recommendations contained in the Report of the Fourth Round of Evaluation and encourages the country to continue the activities started in this direction and noted that further reforms are underway regarding a number of the remaining recommendations.
This, as announced by the Ministry of Justice, was adopted at the 90th plenary session of GRECO, which took place from March 21-25 this year, when the Addendum to the Second Report of GRECO on compliance of the Republic of North Macedonia within the Fourth Evaluation Round was adopted ( on the topic: "Prevention of corruption among MPs, judges and prosecutors").
"Out of a total of nineteen recommendations, nine have been implemented to a satisfactory extent, nine have been partially implemented, and only one recommendation has not been implemented," the statement said.
In relation to the judiciary, GRECO is said to have noted an expansion of the scope of sanctions applied to judges, citing Article 78 paragraph (2) of the Law on Courts.
In relation to prosecutors, GRECO welcomed the adoption of the new code of ethics, which is a comprehensive set of rules related to integrity. Also, GRECO highlighted as positive the fact that the decisions of the supervisory body regarding ethical violations (the Ethics Council) enable the initiation of disciplinary proceedings against the prosecutors concerned.
In relation to the property status reporting system, it has been determined that the presented statistical data show a more efficient implementation in practice of the property status reporting system. The number of administrative checks carried out by the DCSC has increased and they resulted in the identification of violations on procedural grounds, that is, untimely delivery of the questionnaires for reporting property status.
GRECO gave a deadline of March 31, 2023 to inform about the implementation of the remaining recommendations.
