1.
Under
the EU, exposure to competitive pressures and shared rules and regulations, it
was thought, would make firms and businesses less corrupt.
2.
Corruption
in the EU exists and persists because competitive pressures lead some firms to
seek an edge against competition through illegal means.
3.
The
legal and political economist views, emphasising human agency and incentives,
imply that the EU’s fraud problem is due to a corruptible bureaucracy, the
existence of programmes that are vulnerable to fraud by third parties and too
few checks and balances to counter administrative monopolies.
4.
The
political and legal solutions fail to take into account the peculiar structure
of international organisations, including the possible differences in attitudes
towards corruption that may affect member countries’ institutional responses to
corruption and its peculiar principal/agent structure: we have the conundrum that
the member- states, as principals, have delegated to themselves the collection
and distribution of an enormous percent age of the EU’s budget and have also
delegated to themselves the operation of most of its regulatory structure.
5.
The ‘micro- motives’ of individuals,
firms, political parties and also governments still could make it rational to
engage in corrupt practices.
6.
What
may appear to be fraud or corruption is merely a form of incompetence and a
reflection of inadequate resources: the inability of officials and businesses
to apply EU regulations because of their extreme complexity, their
contradictions, the lack of staff and the competing jurisdictions to which they
are subject.
7.
While
privatisation helps countries meet the EU’s competition and budget
requirements, it instead often is a source of corruption, in which competition
is restricted to a politically chosen few who are willing to reimburse the
government, illegally, for keeping real competition and competitors at bay.
Reference
Warner, Carolyn: “Sources of Corruption in
the European Union” in Paul M. Heywood (ed), Routledge Handbook of Political
Corruption, (New York: Routledge, 2015), pp. 121-130
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