The Europe and Central Asia department at the TI Secretariat works to support the national chapters in their national level anti-corruption efforts and acts as the link between the national chapters and other TI Secretariat staff coordinating regional and global programmes.

Please note that the projects and activities listed below have been implemented or coordinated by the Europe and Central Asia department at the TI Secretariat. For information about the projects and activities of specific chapters in the region, please visit the website of the specific chapter.

The Advocacy and Legal Advice Centres (ALACs) in South Eastern Europe are supported by the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Auswaertiges Amt), the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Please see the priority issues page for more information, or contact the Programme Coordinator for South Eastern Europe.

The annual regional meeting serves as a forum to discuss substantive issues in areas of global priority for TI; for example, combating corruption in the private sector, curbing corruption in politics, keeping public contracting clean, promoting, enforcing and monitoring anti-corruption conventions, and preventing corruption in development and poverty alleviation work. The regional meeting additionally helps to define regional priorities and serves as a forum to discuss internal governance and strategy issues.

In 2007, the Europe and Central Asia regional meeting was hosted by TI Azerbaijan in Baku. The meeting was opened with a one-day international conference on “Combating Corruption and Reforming Institutions in Transition Economies”. The aim of the conference was to provide a forum for open and practical discussions on anti-corruption issues with a focus on both the Azeri context, the wider regional context and broader issues relating to anti-corruption work in general.

Please contact the EU+ Programme Coordinator for further information.

ECA national chapters contribute to TI’s Global Programmes and projects. For instance both TI Azerbaijan and TI Kazakhstan are involved in TI’s Promoting Revenue Transparency Project, which is one of a number of civil society initiatives aiming to increase transparency in extractive industry revenue flows, and to empower citizens with the information they need to hold their governments accountable for how these resources are used.

National chapters from Azerbaijan, Croatia, Czech Republic, Georgia, Israel, Mongolia, Romania and Turkey contributed country reports to TI's Global Corruption Report 2007, which focuses on Corruption in Judicial Systems.

Several TI National Integrity System (NIS) country studies have been completed for countries in the Europe and Central Asia region, most recently the study of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In addition to ongoing activities, the Europe and Central Asia department is developing regional anti-corruption programmes in the areas such as:

• Higher education;
• Public procurement;
• EU accession monitoring;
• Whistleblower protection.

The Transparency Through Awareness (TTA) project (May 2005 – May 2006) contributed to the effective and transparent use of European Union (EU) Structural Funds in a number of new EU member states. The TTA project increased public and civil society understanding of the purpose, distribution and use of structural funds. The TI-Secretariat coordinated the implementation of the with the national chapters in the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Slovakia. This project was funded by the European Commission.

For more information, please contact the EU+ Programme Coordinator.

The Anti Corruption Resource Centre (ACRC) programme (January 2002 – December 2004) was implemented in seven countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and Eastern Europe (EE) and was the forerunner to the Advocacy and Legal Advice Centres (ALAC) project. Funding was provided by the European Commission.

To read more about the results and evaluation of this project see the TI - ACRC Final Evaluation Report . For any other information, please contact the EU+ Programme Coordinator.

The Accountability Programme in the Western Balkans (September 2002 – January 2006) worked to address deficiencies in governmental accountability and to provide solutions through areas of good governance. The programme was funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Government of Finland. Please see the project rationale and outline Accountability Programme rationale and outline or contact the SEE Programme Coordinator for more information.

As follow-up to the Accountability Programme, TI produced a report on the state of access to information in several South Eastern European countries. A significant amount of funding was provided by the Open Society Institute.