Assessing the Extent and Impact of European Anticorruption Regulation

Comparative research increasingly treats criminal accountability as central to anti-corruption, yet cross-national measurement remains fragmented. Legal inventories of offences and procedural powers are rarely linked to enforcement outcomes, while outcome-based indicators often overlook the legal and institutional constraints shaping prosecution and adjudication. This paper proposes an integrated framework connecting de jure criminal-law capacity to de facto elite accountability across Europe. We combine EUCAL, an offence-based mapping of anti-corruption criminal law aligned with UNCAC standards—yielding fulfilment indices for criminalisation, sanctions, procedural and enforcement tools, and legal constraints (e.g., immunities and limitation periods)—with a new dataset tracking corruption-related proceedings against former cabinet ministers in 35 countries since 2000, using final convictions as a conservative enforcement benchmark. Empirically, we estimate “accountability gaps” between legal capacity and realised enforcement and identify the institutional configurations most strongly associated with elite convictions. We also theorise the clustered, wave-like temporal dynamics of convictions as outcomes shaped by reform cycles, politicization, and backlash.