GRECO: Bratislava has a number of well-established practices for preventing corruption
15. 05. 2026
3 minutes read
Bratislava, 15 May 2026 – The capital city took part in a GRECO evaluation, which this time focused on preventing corruption and promoting integrity at the level of local government. In its final evaluation, the Commission noted, among other things, that Bratislava had exceeded the national framework and had developed a number of good practices for preventing corruption and promoting integrity. It expressed appreciation, for example, of the level of transparency in the selection of managers and members of the boards of directors of city companies and organisations, as well as in the area of procurement. At the same time, it offered the city several recommendations that can further help it to prevent corruption.
The Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) is a body of the Council of Europe whose goal is to improve the ability of its members in fight against corruption.
GRECO helps identify deficiencies in national anti-corruption policies and accelerate the necessary legislative process, institutional reforms and subsequent changes in application practice. GRECO provides a platform for the exchange of experience in the field of preventing corruption. Five rounds of such evaluations have thus far been conducted, each focusing on a different area.
The subject of the sixth and final round of evaluation was the prevention of corruption and promotion of integrity at the level of local government. GRECO for the first time dealt with authorities at the local and regional level, since these authorities have broad competences in the field of managing public resources and provide many services for citizens.
Registration for the evaluation was on a voluntary basis. Bratislava took advantage of this offer and, together with the Trenčín Self-Governing Region, applied for the evaluation, whereby we were among first states to be evaluated in this way.
The evaluation team, made up of experts from the Czechia, Moldova, the Netherlands and North Macedonia, together with members of the GRECO Secretariat, focused its evaluation on the integrity frameworks and anti-corruption measures of the city of Bratislava and the Trenčín Self-Governing Region. Not only staff from the evaluated authorities, but also national supervisory authorities, civic organisations and academic institutions, cooperated in the evaluation.
The result is an evaluation report, which was adopted at the GRECO plenary session in March 2026 and is being published today. The report contains the strengths and weaknesses of the evaluated subjects’ current efforts in the fight against corruption; it identifies good practices in this area and provides targeted recommendations to further strengthen integrity and transparency.
The evaluation report states that Bratislava and the Trenčín Self-Governing Region have exceeded the national framework and have developed a number of good practices that underline their commitment to preventing corruption and promoting integrity. These good practices cover many areas, from assessing the implementation of anti-corruption policy documents and ISO anti-bribery certification to verifying the transparency and integrity of hiring employees for management positions, involving stakeholders in the preparation of codes of ethics, and putting positive practices in place in the area of public participation and procurement processes.
Among the recommendations that GRECO provided to Bratislava for further enhancing the prevention of corruption we can mention the regular performance of integrity and corruption risk analyses, the adopting of a separate code of ethics also for elected city representatives (not just for city employees) or putting a law on lobbying into the city’s internal regulations, if such a law is adopted at the national level.
The evaluation report is available at: ENG ↗︎ - FRA ↗︎ - SLK ↗︎