Project Background

ANCORAGE-NET was set up following an international conference entitled European Anti-Corruption Agencies: protecting the Community's financial interests in a knowledge-based, innovative and integrated manner, which took place in Lisbon, 17-19 May 2006. The symposium was attended by a wide range of official entities, individuals and civil society organisations responsible for the fight against corruption in Europe and other parts of the world. At the top, there were the heads and senior representatives of ACAs from various EU member states, candidate countries and third parties eligible under OLAF's Hercule Training Grant, the reason for the organisation of this initiative. Members of conventional enforcement agencies (magistrates, heads of investigative police units and of auditing offices, etc) were also invited, especially from those countries which had not decided to create a specialised ACA. Other participants included: senior officials from IGOs (OLAF, GRECO, UNDOC); representatives from donor coalitions (U4 - Utstein Anti-Corruption Resource Centre) and anti-corruption policy and institutional networks (EHFCN and EPAC); academics and experts in the field of corruption control; international and domestic NGOs (Transparency International, TIRI, CIP-Mozambique, OIKOS); journalists, and high profile personalities, in particular, the former president of the Portuguese Republic, Mr Jorge Sampaio.

The meeting was organised by CIES - Centro de Investigação e Estudos de Sociologia (Lisbon, Portugal) in collaboration with the Australian National University (Canberra, Australia) and was co-financed by the Hercule Grant Programme of the European Antifraud Office. It was an opportunity for academics and practitioners in the field of corruption in Europe and other parts of the world to exchange first-hand experience and knowledge about the role, powers and activities of ACAs, with a view to undertaking further integrated initiatives and policy research.

One month prior to the conference, a questionnaire was circulated to all ACA heads in EU member states and accession and partner countries with 65 questions focusing on various aspects of their mission, mandate, powers, special powers, internal and external accountability framework, funding, organisation and social composition, activities, networking and usage of ICT. All participating countries provided us with a brief account of their national strategies against corruption, including those that do not have them or those where there is a current debate about the creation of such specialized agencies. The information contained in the various National Assessment Surveys on ACAs was treated comparatively and is now available online here.

At the conference, the heads of the ACAs kindly agreed to give substance to this project by voluntarily depositing (and updating) any relevant information concerning the functioning and activities of their specialised agencies. These participants are part of a number of networks and have a seat at various IGO meetings as part of the national delegations of their countries. They meet in a formal institutional context to discuss measures and strategies to combat corruption. In these meetings they can sometimes discuss aspects concerning their operation and performance, but they have never been the object of discussion and analysis per se. The conference was innovative insofar as it invited the ACA heads to discuss, interactively, these and other issues in a friendly academic context. As experts who are also insiders, they confronted the top academics and specialists currently doing research on ACAs. The interaction between research and first-hand experience was enriching to both sides and contributed positively to fostering and improving our general knowledge about these institutional creatures which are likely to remain central to domestic anti-corruption architectures for the next few decades.

The level of formality was kept to the minimum. It was intended, from the outset, that ANCORAGE-NET would operate as a research network and not an institutional network in the mould of the already existing European Partners Against Corruption (EPAC) or the planned European Anti-Corruption Network (EACN). It is not the intention of ANCORAGE-NET to promote co-operation between law enforcement agencies or staff exchanges and training programmes between ACAs. Indirectly, however, the project can work as a tool of communication and the diffusion of knowledge between ACAs around the world and between these and civil society at large. Its ultimate goal is to share knowledge about the nature, format and performance of these institutional realities, which have grown in numbers and visibility in recent years in order to bring about knowledge-based, innovative and integrated solutions to corruption control. Accordingly, there was no founding declaration and there were no statutes approved. The project has simply relied on the goodwill of European ACA officials and their interest in giving birth to this portal and extending membership to other agencies outside Europe. The New South Wales Independent Commission against Corruption in Australia, the Argentinean Oficina Anticorrupción (Anticorruption Office) and the Malawi Anti-Corruption Bureau joined the network after the event.

The three-day conference was the kick-off for this project by achieving, in a very short period of time, a friendly and solid work environment for future collaborative endeavours. This was the first of a series of other meetings that, hopefully, will take place in the coming years. Transnational co-operation will continue under the auspices of the first online research network of ACAs: ANCORAGE-NET. The ACA heads will be regularly contacted and asked to supply new information on their activities and anti-corruption strategies, on successes and achievements which they might wish to share with colleagues from other countries, on publications of mutual interest (e.g. reports, policy papers), and so on. Other dissemination tools such as newsletters, working paper series and professional mailing lists will be set up in order to send out regular information about the network's future activities and products.