But as of late June, negotiations have been at a deadlock due to three proposals in the directive’s text, which have been the subject of disagreement between members countries. The main sticking point is over the offense of “abuse of office” by public officials, with opponents demanding its reclassification from a criminal to an administrative offense.
Simply put, the anti-corruption directive is at a critical juncture. Questions is, will the bloc finally step up, or will it be business as usual?
Italy and Germany are currently leading the dissent, with support from Hungary, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Their argument is that the provision is vague, overly broad and open to misuse, as it could be used to target and charge public officials in order to create a public show of fighting corruption. They also argue it may discourage officials from working for public administration or approving publicly funded projects for fear of facing criminal prosecution.
Italy itself abolished the offense of abuse of office in 2024, after it had been part of its criminal law for almost a century. So, the provision’s inclusion in the EU directive would require its reinstatement in their state law. Moreover, the reasoning behind Italy’s decriminalization was that the law hindered decision-making at the local and central levels of government, with officials afraid of being charged for allocating public resources. It had also become a politically driven instrument of prosecutorial harassment, with recent figures showing just nine in 5,000 criminal cases resulted in convictions.
Some other EU members support this perspective, but the truth is, changing the law to an administrative offense would make it easier for public officials to engage in clientelism, nepotism and outright corruption, potentially opening the door to more white-collar crime and muddying the waters on possible conflicts of interest.
Right now, the Parliament considers the decriminalization of abuse of office to be a redline, crucial to the bloc’s efforts to consistently combat corruption. This is a major issue in the EU, and until now, it has repeatedly failed to introduce robust legislation to target the problem, let alone effectively enforce it.