Over the years, the EU has developed clear membership requirements for countries desiring to enter the Union. Today these requirements also include meeting certain standards in the areas of anti-corruption and good governance. Although the candidate and potential candidate countries are required to ‘make progress’ in these areas, so far there have been no clear standardised baselines that would allow their progress (or regress) to be monitored.

In this regard, Transparency International has developed the Comparative Indicator-based Monitoring of Anti-corruption Progress initiative (CIMAP), based on EU governance and anti-corruption membership requirements, as well as general good practice standards in the field. The initiative has been designed together with four partner countries – Albania, Kosovo, FYR Macedonia and Turkey – and assessed three national institutions in these countries: the judiciary, legislature and public administration (the civil service).

The findings reflect the current situation in each country and provide a baseline and guide for advancing anti-corruption efforts that are consistent with EU requirements and international good practice.