On 6 October 2026, GRECO President David Meyer addressed the 25th Annual Conference of the European Partners against Corruption and the European contact-point network against corruption (EPAC/EACN) in Budva, Montenegro.

Speaking in the opening plenary session, "Combatting Corruption: Latest Strategic Perspectives from European and International Partners", Mr Meyer said that Europe's legal framework against corruption is now largely in place, but public trust has not followed. He described corruption as "a democratic-security risk" that weakens institutions and opens the door to state capture, and stressed that "democratic resilience is not built when institutions are under attack. It is built long before."

Drawing on GRECO's monitoring, he outlined three shifts. The first is from rules on paper to safeguards that work in practice. The second is from central government to every level where public power is exercised, including justice institutions and local and regional authorities, the focus of GRECO's Sixth Evaluation Round. The third is from separate efforts to a single integrity system in which prevention and enforcement reinforce each other. He underlined that integrity rules must apply first to those with the most power. He added that anti-corruption bodies need adequate staff, expertise, access to data and a secure budget, noting that "capacity is not an administrative detail; it is an integrity safeguard" and that “independence without capacity is not real independence".

Mr Meyer also stressed the importance of consistency between international anti-corruption frameworks, building on the United Nations Convention against Corruption, the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention and the Council of Europe's conventions, noting that fuller EU participation in GRECO would close the asymmetry with EU Member States, all of which GRECO already evaluates.

The panel also included János Bertók (OECD), Kristina Jankovich (European Commission) and Constantine Palicarsky (UNODC).