Strategy 2020: Empowered Citizens, an Accountable Europe

Our new strategy “Empowered Citizens, an Accountable Europe” will guide our work in the next four years. This document provides a framework for sustained growth, clarity of focus and greater impact.

Transparency and technology are the twin pillars of our strategy. We are inspired by the commitment of our movement in the global Transparency International 2020 Strategy to harness the growing demand by citizens worldwide for more direct forms of accountability. We believe that the EU should embrace a transformative transparency agenda in its policies and legislation, making information relevant to the prevention and detection of corruption available to the wider public.

But information alone is not transparency. Civil society needs the capacity and skills to convert raw data into a tool for accountability. Technology is only part of the answer, but holds out the prospect of the anti-corruption movement acting with unprecedented reach and scale.

With this in mind, the overarching focus of our advocacy for the next four years will be to persuade EU policy makers to provide the legislation, data, mechanisms and space necessary for citizens to come together to fight corruption.

Three priorities will guide our activities:

1. EU money and politics, focussed on improving the transparency, accountability and decision-making of EU institutions.

2. Financial crime and financial flows, focussed on EU transparency reforms that will enhance civil society monitoring of financial flows and the prevention and detection of financial crimes.

3. EU as an anti-corruption champion, focussed on the EU’s efforts to facilitate anti-corruption efforts of governments in Member States and non-EU countries, in particular by creating a space for meaningful engagement with civil society.