Even though corruption and the misuse of public funds have a direct impact on citizens’ lives- for example by reducing resources for public services- most Member States are not taking the European Commission’s rule of law recommendations seriously. The Liberties 2026 Rule of Law Report shows that there has been minimal progress by Member States in tackling corruption. This stagnation is part of a broader trend also visible in other areas of rule of law.
The scoreboard: standing still
Each year, the European Commission recommends governments in all Member States what they need to fix or improve to tackle corruption.
In 2025, the Commission issued 33 recommendations in the field of anticorruption, however, as assessed by Liberties’ member organisations, 20 of these recommendations showed zero progress. Three countries - the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Sweden - moved forward. Three others went actively backwards: Bulgaria, Malta and Slovakia.
Most of these recommendations are not new. They have been sitting on the table since 2022, year after year, unacted on. The same problems - weak lobbying rules, officials moving freely between government and the private sector, politicians hiding their financial interests - have been flagged for years. Governments in the European Union (EU) have chosen not to address them.
Slovakia: dismantling the institutions
In Slovakia for example, the government did not just fail to implement the anti-corruption recommendations, but it went after the institutions fighting it. The Special Prosecutor's Office and the National Crime Agency were dissolved, leaving a major enforcement vacuum. The Council of Europe's anti-corruption body(GRECO), opened an ‘ad hoc procedure’ under Rule 34 against Slovakia. A parliamentary majority then rushed through a law to replace the independent Whistleblower Protection Office with a government-controlled body - a move that would have retroactively stripped protection from around 100 people who had already reported high-level corruption. The Constitutional Court suspended the law in December 2025. After the timeframe that Liberties’ Rule of Law report covers, the European Commission launched an infringement procedure. Eventually, the Slovakian Government promised in March 2026 to repeal the law.
Greece: fraud in plain sight, slow justice
In Greece, 97% of citizens believe corruption is widespread, the highest in the EU, where the average is 69%. In 2025, a major investigation into organised fraud involving EU farming subsidies was referred to parliament because ministers were implicated. Rather than a criminal investigation, the government opted for a committee, widely seen as a tactic to delay accountability. Meanwhile, anti-corruption reporting channels protecting whistleblowers required by law since 2023 show no evidence of being set up, even on the Ministry of Interior's own website.
Hungary: €600 million missing, officially nothing to see
Hungary's Prosecutor's Office does not formally recognise the concept of high-level corruption. At the same time, a €600 million embezzlement investigation at foundations linked to the Hungarian Central Bank went nowhere in 2025. Campaign finance limits were also removed, opening the door to unchecked political spending. Still, EU funds to Hungary remain conditional on rule-of-law reforms as systemic problems in the anti-corruption framework have not been addressed for years despite the conditionality procedure launched in 2022 for the first time in the EU’s history.
Malta and Romania: shifting criminalisation
In Malta, a new law restricted citizens' ability to request criminal inquiries into government wrongdoing, in a country where the Auditor General already flagged over 240 failures in public spending controls. In Romania, serious corruption cases are being dropped not because defendants are innocent, but because parliament never passed legislation required since a 2018 constitutional court ruling, leaving cases to expire on a legal technicality. In both countries, the effect is the same: accountability becomes harder to reach, and impunity easier to maintain.
The bigger picture: no progress
The insights into EU counties' struggling anti-corruption framework above are not exceptions, they are symptoms of a wider pattern. Across the EU, the gap between anti-corruption rules on paper and real enforcement on the ground remains wide.
Lobbying regulation - who is influencing your laws, and how much they are paying for that influence - remains insufficient in 13 EU countries. In most places, citizens simply cannot find out. Revolving doors, where officials move directly from government into the industries they used to regulate, remain poorly controlled. Whistleblowers are promised legal protection that in practice is fragile, inconsistently applied, or, as Slovakia showed, can be stripped away overnight. And when high-level corruption cases do reach the courts, they face delays, legal loopholes, and political interference that too often let the powerful walk free.
Only two EU countries, Estonia and Lithuania, received no recommendations at all in 2025, while significant weaknesses were identified across the Member States, most of which remain insufficiently addressed. This is therefore not a problem confined to a few struggling democracies. It is an EU-wide omission, and it demands EU-wide determination to fix it.
Anti-corruption steps only matter if they are implemented, monitored and enforced, and 2025's record gives little grounds for complacency. What is needed now is a real political will. Citizens across the EU deserve governments that are committed to implement reforms.
Trend Analyses
Report: Deepening Rule of Law Crisis in the EU Exposes Shortcomings of Commission Action
EU Violations: When the Standard Bearer Starts to Slide
Justice on Pause: Europe's Courts Wait for Reforms That Never Arrive
Civic Space and Protest Rights Under Threat in 2025
Resources
Download the full Liberties Rule of Law Report 2026
Previous annual rule of law reports: 2025 2024 2023 2022 2021 2020
Press Release: EU Rule of Law Erodes Further as Commission Struggles to Respond
