Anti-corruption plan: from what needs to be done… to doing it

President Sánchez has presented the new State Plan to Combat Corruption, structured around five pillars and comprising fifteen measures. The political will to comprehensively address one of the main challenges facing any democracy: corruption, is always welcome.

Combating it involves three levels of intervention: reaction, prevention, and culture. That is, prosecuting crimes, avoiding the conditions that allow them, and building an institutional and social culture that makes them inconceivable. Or, to put it another way: making corruption prosecutable, impractical, and unthinkable.

Beyond a detailed technical analysis of the Plan, it is worth highlighting some key elements and reflecting on their connection to the Catalan context.

Among the most relevant proposals of the State Plan is automatic inclusion on blacklists (blacklisting) of companies convicted of corruption, thus preventing them from contracting with the government again. Equally notable is the concept of administrative confiscation, which will allow assets to be seized even without a final conviction (we already know how fast justice is going).

The creation of an Independent Public Integrity Agency is also planned, centralizing powers that are currently dispersed, and the previously rather symbolic Whistleblower Protection Authority created by Law 2/2023, the (late) transposition of a European directive, is being reinforced with a budget.

But let's focus on Catalonia. To begin with, the plan constantly mentions the importance of open government and citizen participation in preventing corruption. A differentiating element in this regard is that in Catalonia we have a strong network of anti-corruption organizations organized under the Social Pact against Corruption. A few weeks ago, the third Summit against Corruption took place in the Parliament, where it became clear that many of the commitments made by political parties at the second summit have not been fulfilled. Many of the measures outlined in the State Plan have been in place for years.

In the last legislative session, a draft Catalan integrity law was promoted, more ambitious than mere whistleblower protection because it proposed a comprehensive system to coordinate prosecution, prevention, and culture. However, it did not provide for a new integrity agency, as the Catalan Anti-Fraud Office already exists, which could assume this role with the necessary reforms. Currently, the collapse of its role as an external channel for whistleblowers is evident, and several whistleblowers have called for greater effectiveness and real protection.

Catalonia was also a pioneer in initiatives such as the Interest Group Registry, the first in Spain. However, after a decade, there seems to be a consensus on the limits it poses—political influence is often exercised outside of formal channels. Therefore, rather than registering lobbying, it may be more effective—not only in terms of corruption prevention, but also transparency in general—to publish the full agendas of senior officials and, although it may seem a distant issue, to establish the figure of the professional public manager once and for all, to prevent the appointment of positions based solely on partisan trust.

And since we're talking about parties, it's surprising that more direct attention isn't paid to their role in corruption schemes, given that they are key players in the appointment of public officials and recipients of opaque funding in many scandals. The State Plan proposes mandatory external audits for parties that receive more than €50,000 in public funds, as well as a lower threshold for declaring donations. But perhaps we should go further: review spending limits, financing, and the internal operating model of parties, which is often opaque and impervious to accountability.

Another success of the Plan is the incorporation of risk maps and proactive analyses. Currently, declarations of assets and incompatibilities are a bureaucratic process, rarely reviewed due to a lack of resources. What should be a tool for oversight is often a mere formality. The administration must move from a self-defensive attitude ("We've already asked") to a proactive approach: identifying, preventing, and acting before the damage is done.

In short, the bad news: there's still a lot to do, and many of the proposals should already be a reality by now. The good news? We know what to do.