GRECO visits High Commissioner

As part of the 4th Evaluation Round by the Council of Europe’s Group of States against Corruption (GRECO), a delegation of the group’s evaluators visited the Principality from 21 to 25 November 2016.

Through interviews with key national stakeholders, the delegation was keen to get to know the Office of the High Commissioner, an independent entity responsible for protecting rights and freedoms and, in this capacity, the main interlocutor with international human rights bodies.

Following a presentation giving a general overview of the institution and more specifically the various areas of competence of the High Commissioner, a number of topics of interest to GRECO were discussed, including defining where the High Commissioner can intervene in cases of corruption, and the issue of conflicts of interest, a particularly relevant topic in Monaco due to the small size of the country.

More broadly, the evaluators were also interested in how the legislative process operates in Monaco, and dwelled on the High Commissioner’s specific role in providing an opinion, at the request of the Government or the National Council, on draft laws in the process of development or under discussion.