The EU and anticorruption reforms in Greece

A burgeoning literature has examined the design of Greece’s bailout programs, the scope of fiscal consolidation, and the human costs of Greece’s recession. However, the implementation of anticorruption reforms has received little attention in the research community. In this paper, we ask to what extent Greece has followed EU recommendations in this area, and how Greek anticorruption measures were evaluated by the EU. We argue that the majority of anticorruption reforms are ineffective, for two reasons. First, the European Commission has failed to articulate clear goals and adequate assessment criteria that are based on an analysis of the country’s corruption history. Second, reforms were ineffective due to poor implementation by Greek administrations. Failure was the outcome where reforms were not accompanied by judicial enforcement, where anti-corruption bodies were not independent of the executive or couldn’t coordinate their activities, where Greek officials remained inactive, and where prior reforms were voided by legislation granting amnesty to high-level tax offenders or corrupt politicians. Reform was successful where procedures were institutionalized with the help of technology (e.g. the introduction of e-governance in taxation and the health sector). We explain which groups endured some reform costs, and what type of measures undermined anticorruption reforms.