EU Trade Policy and Transnational Corruption: Leading the Fight for Clean Trade

This paper examines how the European Union can leverage its position as a global leader in trade to tackle corruption. The issue is timely given the changing character of the EU’s trade policy that is poised to become more assertive, particularly in light of open strategic autonomy objectives. Furthermore, existing international and domestic anti-corruption frameworks, despite some positive steps such as extraterritoriality, fall short in addressing a novel type of corruption that has benefitted from globalisation and become truly transnational. Such ‘transnational’ or ‘international’ corruption means that, in an interconnected world, corruption in one part of the world can have an effect elsewhere, allowing malicious actors to cross borders and exploit jurisdictions with weaker anti-corruption measures to circumvent the stronger frameworks.

The paper argues in favour of incorporating anti-corruption provisions into EU trade policy. It proposes to address the issue both through including robust anti-corruption provisions in EU trade agreements and through making compliance with such provisions a condition for receiving preferential trade. Through this ‘carrot-and-stick’ approach, the EU can assertively use its economic leverage to instil anti-corruption prevention, identification and penalisation among its trading partners.