3 GAPS IN THE INTERNATIONAL FIGHT AGAINST CORRUPTION. 30 years of standards, non-compliance and insufficient implementation

Over the last three decades, an extensive international anti-corruption architecture has been built. Conventions, evaluation mechanisms, recommendations and monitoring systems have made it possible to develop common standards and identify deficiencies in national laws and practices. However, the persistence of these deficiencies makes it possible to distinguish three different problems that are often conflated: the insufficiency of international standards themselves, the failure of national legislation to conform to those standards, and the distance between existing rules and their effective implementation. This article refers to these three problems as the international normative gap, the national compliance gap and the implementation gap. Analysis of the OAS, United Nations, GRECO, OECD and the Venice Commission shows that all three have been identified, albeit using different terminology, by the principal international organizations active in this field. The recent adoption of Directive (EU) 2026/1021 adds a particularly relevant element. In 2023, the European Commission proposed going, to the extent possible, beyond the minimum requirements of the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) and making the criminalisation of abuse of functions mandatory. The European Parliament advocated an even broader framework in several respects. However, negotiations in the Council, composed of the governments of the Member States, reduced the scope of the proposal. The text ultimately adopted replaced abuse of functions with a more limited offence and allows Member States to restrict its application to certain categories of public officials. At the same time, part of the definition of high-level officials continues to depend on national law. The case shows that anti-corruption gaps are not merely inherited deficiencies that institutions seek to correct. Their extent can also be determined during the political processes through which the rules intended to combat corruption are themselves made.