19.03.2025.
Within the project “Countering Economic Crime in Serbia”, funded by Sweden represented by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, and implemented by the Council of Europe, a training session was held on March 18, 2025, for employees of the Agency. This training was conducted as part of the activity “Improving the Risk Assessment of Corruption in Regulations” and included the presentation of the Methodology for Assessing the Risk of Corruption in the Implementation of Regulations, developed by Council of Europe experts Cristina Ciubotaru, Valts Kalniņš, and Silviu Popa.
At the beginning of the meeting, Ms. Ana Selić, Program Manager at the Council of Europe, expressed her gratitude to the consultants for drafting the methodology, emphasizing that the primary goal of the meeting was to present the document, gather feedback, and explore possibilities for its implementation.
In her opening remarks, Ms. Nataša Božić, Secretary of the Agency, thanked the Council of Europe for its continuous support and highlighted the importance of improving the methodology for assessing the risk of corruption in regulations, a key competency of the Agency. She also underscored the significance of corruption risk assessment as a preventive mechanism, the necessity of incorporating mandatory risk assessments in draft laws, and the role of the Agency’s training programs in introducing authorized law drafters to the concept of risk assessment methodology. Additionally, she emphasized the need to strengthen the Agency’s human resources capacity in this area.
Following the introductory remarks, Council of Europe experts presented various aspects of the methodology to attendees, including its scope, definitions of key terms, criteria for selecting laws for analysis, identification of corrupt practices within legislation, and recommended mitigation measures. They also addressed the impact of selected laws on legal and natural persons, key indicators, and sources of detected corruption risks.
Furthermore, the experts demonstrated the methodology for calculating corruption risks based on specific indicators, as well as assessing the harmful effects of implementing regulations—considering both the probability of occurrence and severity of impact. The session concluded with a summary of the complete methodology and an overview of the formats for corruption risk assessment reports.
The presented methodology will be finalized in the coming period through the selection of a law for pilot implementation.
