The Economic Crime and Cooperation Division (ECCD) presented its efforts towards strengthening ethics and integrity in the public and the private sector to the Working Group on Public Ethics of the European Committee on Democracy and Governance (CDDG).

The presentation demonstrated the efforts taken in jurisdictions such as Albania, Republic of Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia, Turkey, Ukraine etc., which led to improvement of regulatory and oversight structures. Furthermore project interventions have supported the development of codes of ethics and codes of conduct for members of parliament, judges, prosecutors and other categories of public servants, which were subsequently adopted by the respective authorities.

In addition the ECCD has already developed a set of resources which are available to countries benefiting from project interventions, these include:

1. Legislative Toolkit on Conflict of Interest;
2. Legislative Toolkit on Integrity Testing
3. Legislative Toolkit on Lobbying

In conclusion it was noted that despite the positive steps and progress challenges remain, such as the need for stronger ethical and conduct standards, regulation on incompatibility of functions, and general weaknesses of oversight and enforcement mechanisms identified both among and beyond Council of Europe member states.