4.- THREE GAPS IN THE INTERNATIONAL FIGHT AGAINST CORRUPTION

Over the last three decades, an extensive international anti-corruption architecture has been built. Conventions, evaluation mechanisms, recommendations and monitoring systems have made it possible to develop common standards and identify deficiencies in national laws and practices. However, the persistence of these deficiencies makes it possible to distinguish three different problems that are often conflated: the insufficiency of international standards themselves, the failure of national legislation to conform to those standards, and the distance between existing rules and their effective implementation.

This article refers to these three problems as the international normative gap, the national compliance gap and the implementation gap. Analysis of the OAS, United Nations, GRECO, OECD and the Venice Commission shows that all three have been identified, albeit using different terminology, by the principal international organizations active in this field.

The recent adoption of Directive (EU) 2026/1021 adds a particularly relevant element. In 2023, the European Commission proposed going, to the extent possible, beyond the minimum requirements of the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) and making the criminalisation of abuse of functions mandatory. The European Parliament advocated an even broader framework in several respects. However, negotiations in the Council, composed of the governments of the Member States, reduced the scope of the proposal. The text ultimately adopted replaced abuse of functions with a more limited offence and allows Member States to restrict its application to certain categories of public officials. At the same time, part of the definition of high-level officials continues to depend on national law.

The case shows that anti-corruption gaps are not merely inherited deficiencies that institutions seek to correct. Their extent can also be determined during the political processes through which the rules intended to combat corruption are themselves made.

Keywords: corruption; UNCAC; GRECO; MESICIC; OECD; European Union; abuse of functions; normative gap; implementation gap; rule of law.

1. Thirty years of international anti-corruption architecture

The contemporary international fight against corruption developed particularly from the 1990s onwards. The Inter-American Convention against Corruption, adopted on 29 March 1996, was the first international instrument of this kind. It was followed, among others, by the Council of Europe Criminal Law Convention on Corruption of 1999 and the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC), adopted in 2003.

Over the following decades, not only did the number of rules increase. Evaluation mechanisms were also created to assess their incorporation and operation within national legal systems: the Follow-Up Mechanism for the Implementation of the Inter-American Convention against Corruption (MESICIC), the Council of Europe Group of States against Corruption (GRECO), and the UNCAC Implementation Review Mechanism, among others.

The result is an international architecture considerably more developed than the one that existed thirty years ago. Yet its own evaluation mechanisms continue to identify legislative deficiencies, unimplemented recommendations and differences between formally existing rules and their operation in practice.

The OECD Anti-Corruption and Integrity Outlook 2026 provides a particularly clear measurement of this last difference. Across OECD member countries, the average strength of the regulations examined reaches 63%, while implementation reaches 44%: a gap of 19 percentage points. Among partner countries, the difference rises to 26 points. The OECD considers the implementation gap to remain the main challenge for integrity systems in 2026.

But this implementation gap is only one of the gaps that exist.

Comparative analysis of the main international mechanisms makes it possible to distinguish at least three levels:

INTERNATIONAL STANDARD NEEDED → international normative gap
EXISTING INTERNATIONAL STANDARD → national compliance gap
NATIONAL LAW → implementation gap → REALITY

The three gaps are different and require different responses.

2. First gap: the international normative gap

The first gap appears before examining State compliance.

It can be defined as the distance between the international standard that would be necessary to address the phenomenon of corruption adequately and the standard that international organizations have actually managed to establish.

The issue, therefore, is not whether a State complies with a convention. The prior question is:

are the international rules that States are required to comply with themselves sufficient?

The 1996 Inter-American Convention provides a particularly significant precedent because, from its inception, it incorporated the possibility that the existing framework might need further development.

Article XI is entitled “Progressive Development”. The States Parties recognised the desirability of considering the incorporation of new forms of conduct into their legislation and undertook to consider their criminalisation in order to foster the progressive development and harmonisation of national legislation and achieve the purposes of the Convention.

This was not an obligation subsequently to amend the Convention itself or automatically to criminalise all such conduct. But it did amount to recognition that the normative construction of anti-corruption law was a process capable of further development.

Thirty years later, that question remains open.

2.1. UNCAC: obligations and conduct whose criminalisation need only be considered

UNCAC is the international anti-corruption instrument with the broadest global reach. However, it distinguishes between conduct whose criminalisation it requires and conduct whose incorporation States are only required to consider.

The latter include trading in influence (Art. 18), abuse of functions (Art. 19), illicit enrichment (Art. 20), bribery in the private sector (Art. 21), and embezzlement or misappropriation of property in the private sector (Art. 22).

This distinction is legally fundamental.

The inclusion of conduct in UNCAC does not necessarily mean that States are required to criminalise it. In certain areas, the international standard consists precisely in requiring States only to consider criminalisation.

Abuse of functions is a particularly important example. UNCAC recognises the conduct, but Article 19 does not make its criminalisation mandatory.

Two different situations can therefore coexist:

a State may formally comply with the international standard while nevertheless leaving outside its anti-corruption criminal law conduct that the Convention itself has identified as relevant.

The criminalisation gap analysed in the previous article in this series can therefore be situated within the broader architecture examined in this article and, specifically, within this first gap: the international normative gap.

3. Second gap: national compliance

Once the international standard has been established, a second question arises:

have States adequately incorporated it into their national legislation?

This is the national compliance gap: the distance between the applicable international obligations and standards and national law.

It is different from the previous gap. In the first, the insufficiency may lie in the international standard itself. In the second, the standard exists, but national legislation does not reproduce it fully or does so subject to limitations.

3.1. GRECO: persistent recommendations concerning national legislation

GRECO’s work provides numerous examples.

Its Third Evaluation Round specifically examined the incriminations provided for in the Criminal Law Convention on Corruption and its Additional Protocol. For years, the reports identified deficiencies concerning matters such as bribery of members of assemblies, foreign and international officials, jurors and arbitrators, private-sector corruption, trading in influence, jurisdiction and sanctions.

Germany illustrates how long these processes can take. GRECO identified deficiencies relating to various incriminations and parliamentary corruption. Germany had signed the Criminal Law Convention on Corruption in 1999, but ratification came much later, following successive legislative amendments. In 2024, the legislation on parliamentary corruption was amended again.

France amended jurisdictional restrictions.

Italy had to amend, among other matters, aspects relating to private-sector corruption and trading in influence.

Spain provides another example. In its Third Evaluation Round, GRECO found that private-sector bribery was not criminalised at the time and described this as an important lacuna, alongside other deficiencies concerning incriminations. Subsequent reforms of the Criminal Code substantially changed this situation.

The United States provides a particularly significant case concerning high-level officials. In its Fifth Evaluation Round, GRECO considered that the country has extensive legislation and institutional infrastructure to prevent corruption and promote integrity in the federal executive, covering most persons entrusted with top executive functions. However, it identified exceptions precisely at the apex of executive power: the President and Vice-President are exempt from numerous statutory and regulatory integrity provisions, although criminal anti-bribery rules do apply to them; the White House has no Inspector General; and certain conflict-of-interest rules do not legally apply to the President. GRECO also noted that the President can make certain White House appointments without being subject to the general framework, including anti-nepotism rules.

The United Kingdom profoundly transformed its legislation through the Bribery Act 2010.

These processes reveal something that aggregate analysis of the existence of international conventions can obscure: signing or ratifying an international instrument does not mean that the national legal order has immediately attained the standard established by that instrument.

3.2. United Nations: “challenges in implementation”

The UNCAC Implementation Review Mechanism provides similar evidence using its own terminology.

Country reviews distinguish, among other elements, successes and good practices and challenges in implementation. United Nations aggregate documents also refer to gaps and shortcomings in national frameworks, necessary legislative reforms and implementation gaps.

The United Nations mechanism therefore does not necessarily use the categories proposed in this article, but the information it produces makes it possible to distinguish between the existence of the international standard, national legislative incorporation and implementation.

The reviews have generated thousands of requests for technical assistance from States and have identified legislative, institutional and operational needs.

3.3. MESICIC

The Inter-American MESICIC provides a third body of evidence.

Its methodology examines not only the existence of national provisions related to the Inter-American Convention, but also their adequacy, their results and compliance with previous recommendations.

This distinction is important because a rule may exist without being sufficient, and it may be formally sufficient without producing effective implementation.

Pending recommendations therefore do not necessarily constitute a fourth gap. They may show the persistence over time of any of the previous gaps.

4. Compliance and Implementation Gaps in the European Union

European Union law provides a particularly developed case for observing compliance and implementation gaps. The European Commission monitors the application of EU law and may initiate infringement proceedings when a Member State fails to transpose a directive, transposes it incorrectly, or fails to apply EU law properly. The procedure may progress from a letter of formal notice to a reasoned opinion and, if non-compliance persists, referral to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). A Member State may even be referred to the Court again if it fails to comply with a judgment.

The historical distribution of these proceedings is particularly significant for the present analysis. The four largest EU economies — Germany, France, Italy and Spain, already examined in the first article of this series — repeatedly appear among the Member States with the largest numbers of infringement proceedings at different stages and over different periods. Historical Commission data record letters of formal notice, reasoned opinions and referrals to the Court, allowing non-compliance to be observed before it reaches the judicial stage.

The cumulative judicial record is especially revealing. Between 1952 and 2025, 4,210 actions for failure to fulfil obligations were brought against Member States before the Court. Italy ranks first with 669 actions, while France (423), Germany (302) and Spain (277) are also among the six Member States with the highest cumulative numbers. Belgium (400) and Greece (429) complete the top six. The Netherlands records 153 actions and Portugal 221. Thus, the four largest EU economies are all among the six leading Member States, together with Belgium and Greece.

The phenomenon is not confined to the past. In 2021–2025, actions brought before the Court continued to involve, among others, Spain (14), Italy (11), Belgium (10), Germany (7), the Netherlands (5) and France (4). The Commission’s monitoring also distinguishes proceedings initiated, cases remaining open, reasoned opinions, decisions to refer cases to the Court, applications actually brought before it and compliance following judgments. The successive stages therefore make it possible to observe not only the existence of non-compliance but also, in some cases, its persistence.

A particularly recent example illustrates the extent that this gap can reach. On 25 September 2026, the European Commission opened infringement proceedings against 18 of the 27 Member States for failing to notify the complete transposition of certain provisions of the Sixth Anti-Money Laundering Directive (Directive (EU) 2024/1640). They included Germany, France and Spain, as well as Belgium, the Netherlands and Portugal. The Member States have two months to complete the transposition and notify the corresponding measures before the Commission may proceed to issue a reasoned opinion. The case provides a particularly clear example of the second gap analysed in this article: a binding supranational rule exists, but a substantial proportion of the Member States had not fully incorporated it into their national legal systems within the prescribed deadline.

The gap is not limited to the absence or incompleteness of transposition. In July 2026, the Commission opened infringement proceedings against Cyprus, Lithuania, Poland and Slovenia for what it considered to be the incorrect transposition of certain provisions of Directive (EU) 2018/1673 on combating money laundering by criminal law, including provisions concerning offences, penalties and aggravating circumstances.

These data do not imply that each infringement constitutes corruption. Their relevance to the present analysis is different: legally identifiable non-compliance with supranational rules is not confined to less economically developed Member States. Depending on its nature, an infringement may reveal a failure to transpose or an incorrect transposition — a national compliance gap — or the incorrect application of an existing rule — an implementation gap. EU infringement proceedings therefore provide an especially formalised example of how the two gaps can be identified, monitored and, ultimately, judicially established.

5. Third gap: from law to implementation

The third gap appears when rules formally exist, but their operation in practice falls short of what is provided for.

This is the implementation gap.

The OECD report of March 2026 probably provides the clearest international quantification currently available.

The OECD analysed 37 member countries and 25 partner countries through its Public Integrity Indicators. Among members, the average strength of regulation was 63%, compared with 44% for implementation, producing the aforementioned gap of 19 percentage points. Among partner countries, the gap reached 26 points.

The differences are particularly large in certain areas. Across OECD countries, the gap reaches 44 percentage points in civil-service disciplinary systems and 35 points in conflict-of-interest management. The OECD also warns that rules that are not implemented or enforced can create a sense of impunity and reduce public trust.

This finding has an important methodological consequence.

Measuring the existence of anti-corruption laws is not the same as measuring the fight against corruption.

A formally extensive regulatory framework can coexist with substantially weaker implementation.

The third gap is therefore:

NATIONAL LAW → implementation gap → REALITY

6. The three gaps can coexist

The three gaps are not alternatives. They can accumulate.

Conduct may be insufficiently covered by the international standard; the State may also incompletely incorporate the existing standard; and the national rules ultimately adopted may be insufficiently implemented.

The result is a chain of successive reductions:

real phenomenon of corruption → international selection of conduct and obligations → national incorporation → effective implementation.

At each transition, part of the phenomenon originally intended to be addressed may be lost.

This also explains why it is insufficient simply to state that a State has ratified UNCAC, belongs to GRECO or has anti-corruption legislation.

The relevant question is much broader:

what corruption does the standard cover, what part of that standard is actually incorporated into national law, and what part of that legislation is ultimately implemented?

7. A gap that can arise during the making of the rule itself: the European Anti-Corruption Directive

The recent Directive (EU) 2026/1021 makes it possible to observe an additional phenomenon.

Normative gaps need not arise only from old conventions that have not yet been updated or from States that have not sufficiently adapted their legislation. The extent of the gap can change during the contemporary process of drafting an anti-corruption rule itself.

The European institutional sequence between 2023 and 2026 is particularly illustrative.

7.1. The Commission: going beyond UNCAC minimum requirements

On 3 May 2023, the European Commission presented its proposal for an Anti-Corruption Directive.

The Commission recalled that the Union is a party to UNCAC and expressly distinguished between offences whose criminalisation the Convention requires and those for which it merely requires criminalisation to be considered, citing among the latter abuse of functions, trading in influence and illicit enrichment.

But it immediately added a different principle: the Union should, to the extent possible, “go beyond the minimum requirements of UNCAC”.

The proposal also explained that it sought to strengthen existing international obligations where necessary and prevent differences between national laws from being exploited by criminals.

The Commission applied that criterion precisely to abuse of functions.

Although Article 19 UNCAC merely requires States to consider criminalisation, the European proposal turned that conduct into a mandatory criminalisation obligation for the Member States.

The Commission therefore did not confine itself to the existing international minimum:

UNCAC: consider criminalisation → European Commission: mandatory criminalisation.

7.2. Parliament: further expansion

During the parliamentary proceedings, the European Parliament advocated a broader position on various elements, including the definition of the persons covered by the rules.

Subsequent negotiating documents also confirm that abuse of functions became a priority issue for Parliament. In May 2025, the Council Presidency stated that the article on abuse of functions remained a “key contentious point” and a “top priority for the European Parliament”, which insisted on the mandatory nature of the provision.

The direction up to that point was therefore:

Commission: expansion beyond UNCAC → Parliament: maintenance and, in certain respects, further expansion.

7.3. The Council: governments narrow the proposal

The direction changes in the Council, the institution composed of the governments of the Member States.

Its position introduced greater national flexibility concerning abuse of functions. Negotiating documents show that several delegations repeatedly opposed making the provision mandatory. In 2025, the Council Presidency recorded the “consistently expressed opposition from a number of delegations to a mandatory Article on abuse of functions”.

The institutional contrast is therefore particularly clear:

Commission → proposes mandatory criminalisation.

Parliament → insists on retaining it and advocates a broader framework in several respects.

Council → several government delegations oppose making it mandatory.

7.4. The outcome: two additional limitations

The final compromise did not retain abuse of functions in the terms initially proposed by the Commission.

Directive (EU) 2026/1021 ultimately uses the concept of “unlawful exercise of public functions”.

Article 7 requires the criminalisation, when committed intentionally, of at least certain serious breaches of law committed through the performance or omission of an act by a public official in the exercise of his or her functions.

But it immediately introduces an additional option:

“Member States may limit the application of this Article to certain categories of public officials.”

A second limitation must be distinguished from the first.

The Directive defines a high-level official as a public official entrusted with fundamental executive, administrative, legislative or judicial functions in accordance with national law. The categories that may be included comprise heads of government, ministers, deputy ministers, state secretaries, political advisers, members of cabinets, parliamentarians, members of constitutional and supreme courts, prosecutors general and other senior officials.

There are therefore two different mechanisms of limitation:

Existen, por tanto, dos mecanismos diferentes de limitación:

reference to national law for the definition of certain relevant categories of public officials;
an express power for States to limit the application of the offence in Article 7 to certain categories of public officials.

The comparative document provided for this analysis also confirms that the final agreement reduced the scope of abuse of functions and that the definition of public official fell short of the breadth sought by Parliament.

The outcome is particularly significant because recital 9 of the final Directive itself retains the statement that the Union should, to the extent possible, go beyond the minimum requirements of UNCAC.

Two different movements therefore coexist in the final text:

statement: the EU should, where possible, go beyond UNCAC minimum requirements;

normative outcome: abuse of functions, initially proposed as a mandatory offence, is transformed into a more limited offence whose application may additionally be restricted to certain categories of public officials.

8. From persistence to regression

Until now, much international analysis of anti-corruption gaps has implicitly envisaged a trajectory of progress:

identification of a deficiency → recommendation → reform → compliance.

Recent evidence shows that the evolution need not be unidirectional.

On 15 September 2026, Transparency International published an analysis of eight European countries — Bulgaria, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Slovakia and Serbia — combining comparison of national frameworks against international standards with monitoring of the European Commission’s Rule of Law Reports from 2020 to 2026.

TI expressly identifies a recurring gap between anti-corruption laws “on paper” and their implementation in practice. But it also states that backsliding has occurred in some countries and that reforms are sometimes delayed, watered down or abandoned before producing effects.

Examples identified by TI include the reduction in Slovakia of limitation periods and penalties applicable to certain corruption offences, and Italy’s abolition of the offence of abuse of office without, according to TI, adequate alternative deterrent measures or sanctions being introduced.

These statements must be attributed to Transparency International. But they introduce an additional dimension into the analysis of the gaps:

gaps can close, remain open or widen again.

The case of the European Directive makes it possible to observe a different variant of the same problem: narrowing can occur even before the rule enters into force, during its negotiation.

9. The Venice Commission: corruption and the rule of law

The Venice Commission provides the broader institutional framework within which these three gaps can be situated.

Its 2016 Rule of Law Checklist incorporated corruption and conflicts of interest into the assessment of the rule of law and examined both preventive and repressive measures and their effective compliance and implementation.

The update adopted in December 2025 takes a particularly relevant step for this analysis by expressly asking whether corruption and corruption-related offences have been criminalised in conformity with international standards.

The question directly connects two of the levels examined here:

international standard → national criminal law.

The Venice Commission also examines whether effective, proportionate and dissuasive sanctions exist, whether the State complies with the findings of international monitoring mechanisms, and whether the effectiveness of adopted measures is assessed.

The anti-corruption problem is thus integrated into a broader rule-of-law issue: having rules is not enough; their adequacy, compliance and effective implementation matter.

10. Persistence of the gaps and capacity to close them

Pending international recommendations introduce an additional dimension into the analysis: time. A deficiency identified and corrected quickly has a different significance from one that continues to appear for years in successive evaluations.

The mechanisms examined repeatedly reveal a sequence:

identified deficiency → recommendation → absence or insufficiency of reform → new evaluation → reiteration of the recommendation.

Reiteration does not constitute a fourth gap. It shows the persistence of one of the previous three. When an international organization identifies a deficiency and it continues to appear in successive evaluation cycles, the problem can no longer be analysed solely as an initially unknown shortcoming.

This does not by itself demonstrate why the deficiency has not been corrected. Causes may include legal, institutional or technical difficulties, lack of resources, disagreement over proposed solutions, or political decisions. But persistence changes the question: in addition to identifying the gap, it becomes necessary to determine who has the capacity to close it and why it remains open after having been repeatedly identified.

The drafting of the new European Directive reveals an additional dimension. Governments are not merely the addressees of anti-corruption standards. They also participate in determining their content and scope, both through international organizations and, in the European Union, through the Council.

The 2023-2026 European legislative process makes this dual condition directly observable. The Commission proposed making the criminalisation of abuse of functions mandatory and stated that the Union should, to the extent possible, go beyond UNCAC minimum requirements. Parliament defended the mandatory nature of that offence and broader coverage in several respects. Several government delegations nevertheless opposed mandatory criminalisation of abuse of functions. The text ultimately adopted replaced that offence with a more limited obligation.

The outcome also incorporated two different limitations. First, certain elements in the definition of public officials depend on national law. Second, States may expressly limit the application of the new offence to certain categories of public officials. The final outcome therefore fell short of the breadth sought at earlier stages of the legislative procedure. The documentation analysed confirms both the narrowing of abuse of functions and the reduced final breadth compared with the position advocated by Parliament.

The case is particularly significant because it shows that a gap need not consist solely of an inherited deficiency that international institutions seek to correct. Its scope can also be determined during the very process of drafting a new anti-corruption rule.

This feature becomes more significant when compared with the findings of international mechanisms. GRECO has shown that national legal systems may establish different coverage according to categories of public officials. In the United States, for example, its Fifth Evaluation Round identified relevant exceptions applying precisely at the apex of the federal executive: the President and Vice-President are not subject to various statutory or regulatory integrity provisions that apply to other senior officials, although criminal anti-bribery rules do apply to them. GRECO also noted other particularities concerning conflicts of interest, appointments and oversight mechanisms.

The US finding does not demonstrate that the powers granted by the European Directive will be used in the same way. It does demonstrate something methodologically relevant: defining the categories of persons subject to an anti-corruption rule can materially alter its scope. The reference to national law and the express possibility of limiting application to certain categories of officials are therefore not merely terminological matters.

The OECD provides another perspective on the United States. Its 2026 country note does not provide aggregate indicators for judicial integrity, prosecutorial integrity and the disciplinary system, which appear as data not available. This absence does not allow a substantive deficiency in those institutions to be inferred, and the general report contains some partial US data. But it limits country-indicator assessment precisely in three areas directly related to the investigation, prosecution, oversight and sanctioning of unlawful conduct.

Persistence has not been interpreted exclusively as a technical problem either. In its European analysis of September 2026, Transparency International attributes part of the difficulties to a lack of commitment by leaders, states that some reforms have been delayed, watered down or abandoned, and observes that, in certain areas, correcting deficiencies requires politicians to regulate themselves, which, according to TI, may explain the slow pace of progress.

This explanation must be distinguished from the facts documented by intergovernmental mechanisms and from the interpretation proposed in this article. The reiteration of recommendations, differences in personal coverage and government participation in the formulation of standards may not in themselves demonstrate a corrupt motive. But they make it possible to formulate a question that purely normative analysis cannot resolve: which actors have the capacity to close the gaps, which interests are affected by reforms, and which factors explain why certain deficiencies remain open or why the scope of certain rules ultimately becomes narrower.

11. Conclusion

Thirty years after the adoption of the Inter-American Convention against Corruption, an extensive international architecture exists, comprising conventions, evaluation mechanisms, recommendations, monitoring systems and indicators. Yet the evidence produced by those same instruments shows that the problem cannot be reduced to the existence or absence of anti-corruption legislation.

This article proposes distinguishing three successive gaps.

The international normative gap separates the standard needed to address corruption adequately from the standard that international rules have actually managed to establish.
The national compliance gap arises between that international standard and its incorporation into national law.
The implementation gap separates formally existing national rules from their effective implementation.

The three gaps can coexist and accumulate. Conduct may be insufficiently covered by the international standard; the State may incompletely incorporate the existing standard; and the national rule ultimately adopted may be insufficiently implemented. The existence of a convention, its ratification or the formal existence of anti-corruption legislation does not, by itself, establish how much of the phenomenon is effectively subject to prevention, investigation, prosecution and sanction.

The analysis also introduces two dimensions that modify a static conception of these gaps: time and the direction of change.

Time makes it possible to distinguish between a recently identified deficiency and one reiterated over successive evaluation cycles. GRECO, UNCAC and MESICIC show that some recommendations may remain pending for years, while the OECD quantitatively documents substantial differences between regulation and implementation.

The direction of change reveals that the process is not necessarily:

identification of the gap → reform → closure of the gap.

Transparency International documented in 2026 cases in which, according to its analysis, anti-corruption reforms were delayed, watered down or abandoned and certain decisions produced backsliding. Added to this is the legislative process of the new European Directive, which makes it possible to observe a different phenomenon: the scope of an anti-corruption rule can be narrowed during its own drafting.

The European Commission had proposed going, to the extent possible, beyond UNCAC minimum requirements and making the criminalisation of abuse of functions mandatory. Parliament defended that mandatory approach. The final outcome, following negotiations with the Council, established a more limited offence and incorporated two particularly relevant national margins: reference to national law for certain aspects of personal scope and the power to restrict application of the new offence to certain categories of public officials. The material analysed confirms both dimensions of the reduction compared with the broader positions advocated during the procedure.

It does not follow that the Directive fails to comply with UNCAC, since Article 19 requires States to consider criminalising abuse of functions, not necessarily to adopt such criminalisation. The relevant result for this analysis is different: an initiative expressly intended to go beyond the international minimum standard ultimately established a more limited obligation than the one initially proposed.

Anti-corruption gaps therefore cannot be understood merely as technical deficiencies awaiting correction. They may lie in the international standard itself, in its national incorporation or in its implementation; they may accumulate and persist for long periods; and they may also widen as a consequence of subsequent normative decisions.

This final finding changes the question with which the analysis began. It is no longer sufficient to determine which gaps exist and how they might be closed. It is also necessary to ask who has the capacity to create, maintain, close or widen them; who participates in those decisions; who may benefit or be harmed by them; and what incentives explain their persistence.

Answering these questions requires moving from analysis of rules, compliance and implementation to analysis of the actors and power structures involved in their formulation and operation. That is a different problem and constitutes a future step in this research.

SERIES ON CORRUPTION. Part 1

Without Corruption There Would Be No Public Debt. https://doi.org/ 10.5281/zenodo.21993280
SYSTEMIC CORRUPTION. From Institutional Consequences to Systemic Transformation. https://doi.org/ 10.5281/zenodo.21994617
The Criminalisation Gap in Corruption. Impunity Can Begin Before Prosecution. https://doi.org/ 10.5281/zenodo.22729133
Three Gaps in the International Fight against Corruption. Thirty Years of Rules, Non-Compliance and Insufficient Implementation. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23019185
Thirty Years of Fighting Corruption: What Have the Results Been? https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23333997
Toward a Structured Definition of Corruption https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23684696
Who Corrupts the Corrupt? From the Individual Corruptor to the Selection and Reproduction of the Corrupt (Forthcoming)

The first seven articles develop an integrated examination of the scale, systemic dimension, legal framework, institutional response, results and definition of corruption, concluding with an analysis of the actors and structures that corrupt and reproduce corruption.

Previous Research Underlying the Series

Normative Asymmetry in the Inter-American Anti-Corruption Framework: Structural Diagnosis and Conduct-Based Enforcement. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18851233
Integrating Structural Risk Analysis into GRECO Evaluations: Methodological Opportunities within the Council of Europe Anti-Corruption Framework. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18871431
Bridging the Structural Gap in the United Nations Convention against Corruption. A Juridical-Economic Analysis of Systemic Corruption in Advanced Economies. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19021241
Structural Calibration in European Union Anti-Corruption Law: A Contextual Mechanism for Judicial Sentencing Individualisation. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19021587

Related Historical-Structural Framework

Marzal, J. (2026). The Rise of the Macro-State: A Historical-Structural Analytical Framework for the Convergence of Economy and Power. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19089595.

Javier Marzal

ORCID: 0009-0009-4373-8068

30 years of standards, non-compliance and insufficient implementation

Table of Contents

Abstract