President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean (PAM) Gennaro Migliore participated on Wednesday at "The Role of National Parliaments and other Legislative Bodies in Preventing and Combating Corruption" session.
At the beginning of his speech, Migliore highlighted that PAM worked on outlining a comprehensive picture of the critical role of the parliaments in the Euro-Mediterranean, and addressed the issue of corruption. Its members had the pleasure to work with different parties.
He said: "PAM addressed the phenomenon of corruption since our Plenary Session in 2009 in Istanbul, when a Special Task Force on Organized Crime was established through the outstanding commitment of the Italian Member of Parliament, Hon. Angela Napoli."
Next, the President of PAM reflected: "Corruption undermines national growth and contributes to poverty, violates democracy and freedom, and is a major impediment to the achievement of the necessary changes for political, social and economic development, justice and democracy."
He asserted that the crisis of corruption violates the manners of justice and democracy. Therefore, PAM adopted two documents concerned with corruption in public sectors which is a milestone of the Assembly for fighting corruption in the EU-Mediterranean countries.
These documents revealed the positive relationship between levels of corruption, and different political factors such as political rights.
"PAM invites its Member States to continue to take all the legislative measures needed to improve activities aimed at addressing the proliferation of the phenomenon and recommends national authorities to promote a change in culture through educational campaigns and other initiatives, designed to improve the understanding of the economic and social aftermaths of corruption," Migliore pointed out.
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In the same context, the EU-Parliament member states continued working in developing strategies and activities to compete against the phenomenon.
After that, the President of PAM pointed out: "Last September, we signed an important agreement with the Global Organization of Parliamentarians Against Corruption (GOPAC) recognized for its leadership in advocating parliamentary work to combat this phenomenon."
Shortly, Migliore mentioned a number of the initiatives and discussions handled with different regional and international institutions to exchange points of view regarding the means to fight and prevent corruption.
"I am convinced that our efforts will be complementary in launching the comprehensive review mechanism of the Convention, in light of the many challenges posed by Artificial Intelligence, dark-web, cryptocurrencies and IT criminal applications.
PAM is committed to bring the parliamentary contribution to the discussion," he continued.
Therefore, the PAM will organize a conference next year on "The Review of the Status of the effectiveness of the Legislative Implementation of the Palermo Convention in the PAM Region."
Finally, he concluded: "I wish that PAM national parliaments continue to sensitize their governments and financial institutions to face this urgent problem.
Corruption represents a major obstacle to economic growth and social development, which, in such a delicate moment of economic instability, should motivate us more to focus our energy and commitment on this vital issue to achieve, one day, a corruption free Euro-Mediterranean region."
This came during the UNODC’s anti-corruption conference, which takes place in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, with 152 countries meeting to advance action through the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) and strengthen integrity responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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