The EU anti-corruption directive, formally adopted in April 2026, is not particularly remarkable. It is full of cautious compromise: the product of difficult negotiations in which several member states – and not only the most obvious suspects – worked systematically to water down its ambitions. On the specific issue of criminal offences, including the abuse of power by public officials, the final text reflects the lowest common denominator. 

And yet the adoption of the directive is a historic event. Not because of what the directive says, but because of what it does: for the first time, anti-corruption is a European policy. This distinction matters enormously. The question is no longer whether member states will address corruption – they must now, under binding EU law – but how ambitiously they will do so, and whether the European institutions will hold them accountable. Once a policy becomes European, the trajectory changes. It may start modestly, but it becomes subject to a logic of progressive refinement that isolated national efforts rarely achieve.

We have seen this before. The European framework on public procurement did not emerge fully formed. It took successive generations of directives – each building on the last, each tightening standards, each expanding the scope of what Europe considers non-negotiable – to build a coherent, enforceable system. Anti-corruption policy is now on the same path. The first step has been taken. The direction is set.

Reading the recitals, not just the articles

To understand what the directive actually demands, one must read not only its operative provisions but its recitals. Here, the ambition is considerably higher. The recitals refer to national anti-corruption strategies, systematic risk assessments, integrity cultures within public administrations, meaningful engagement of civil society, and the protection of democratic spaces from corrupt capture. These are interpretive guides that shape how the directive must be implemented and how the Commission will evaluate compliance.

Member states that choose the path of minimal transposition – changing as little as possible, treating the directive as a box to tick – will find it narrower than it appears. Recital-driven interpretation will be a tool in the hands of the European Commission, the Court of Justice and civil society actors seeking accountability. The apparent safety of minimalist compliance may prove more illusory than some governments expect.

Who resisted, and why

The political history of the negotiations leading to this anti-corruption directive is instructive. The most sustained resistance came from governments that share a recognisable profile: nationalist, Eurosceptic and – not coincidentally – characterised at home by a documented erosion of judicial independence, a weakening of anti-corruption authorities and a tendency to treat public administration as an instrument of political control rather than a service to citizens.

This is not a coincidence. Governments that govern through the capture of institutions understand, with perfect clarity, what binding European anti-corruption standards would mean for them. Their resistance was not technical. It was strategic.

Italy offers perhaps the most instructive case – not because it is the most extreme, but because the dynamic is visible with unusual clarity. In 2024, while the directive was being finalised, the Italian government abolished the criminal offence of abuse of office and considerably narrowed the scope of illicit influence peddling. The stated rationale was to free public officials from the chilling effect of over-criminalisation. The actual effect was to create a significant gap in the protection of legality in public administration: less criminal repression, without any compensating reinforcement of administrative prevention, conflict-of-interest regulation, or integrity infrastructure. The result is a vacuum. And vacuums in anti-corruption systems are not neutral. They are opportunities for the very conduct the system is supposed to prevent.

The real challenge: corruption as regulatory capture

There is a deeper reason why the European level is the appropriate one for anti-corruption policy – and it has to do with the changing nature of corruption itself.

The paradigmatic image of corruption as a cash-stuffed envelope passed between a citizen and a low-level official is increasingly obsolete. Contemporary corruption operates at a higher level: the capture of regulatory agencies, the colonisation of procurement systems by connected networks, the distortion of legislative processes by concentrated interests, the revolving door between public office and private gain. This is corruption as a structural phenomenon – embedded in institutional design, not visible in individual transactions.

National systems, operating in isolation, are structurally ill-equipped to address this form of corruption. The actors seeking to shape public decisions are often transnational. The mechanisms of capture exploit the gaps between jurisdictions. The standards needed to prevent capture – on lobbying, conflicts of interest, asset disclosure and the independence of supervisory authorities – require a level of coordination that only supranational frameworks can provide. The European Union is not merely a convenient venue for this coordination. It is the necessary one.

Europe as a global standard-setter – and its responsibilities

This creates both an opportunity and a responsibility that Europe must consciously assume. In the current global landscape – with the UN Convention Against Corruption lacking effective enforcement mechanisms, and with the United States increasingly retreating from its traditional role as a driver of international anti-corruption standards – the European Union is emerging as the world’s most credible standard-setter in public integrity.

This is a role Europe has played before: in privacy law, corporate sustainability and whistleblower protection. In each case, European standards eventually shaped global practice. Anti-corruption is next. But this external credibility depends entirely on internal coherence. An EU that positions itself as a global beacon of the rule of law while tolerating, within its own borders, the systematic dismantling of anti-corruption safeguards by member state governments will not be credible for long. The legitimacy of European standards abroad requires their honest enforcement at home.

This is particularly acute because of how the EU actually works. European policy is implemented through national administrations. The effectiveness of EU action – in cohesion funding, public procurement, state aid and regulatory enforcement – depends directly on the integrity of the administrative systems through which it flows. A captured national administration fails its own citizens and undermines the entire European project.

An imperfect beginning, an irreversible step

The anti-corruption directive is an imperfect beginning. Its articles are cautious, its recitals are ambitious, its political significance is historic. The member states that resisted it understood its importance better, perhaps, than some of its supporters.

The task now is to ensure that its implementation is taken seriously – not as a compliance exercise, but as the first chapter of a policy that Europe will continue to write. The precedent of public procurement tells us that first-generation directives are starting points, not endpoints. What matters is that the logic of progressive improvement is now in motion, at the level where it needs to operate.

Anti-corruption is now European policy. That does not make this directive a triumph. But it does make it a turning point.

Photo credits: Shutterstock/Kamil Zajaczkowski