The OECD report on corruption points out Portugal’s failures in monitoring the interest registers of senior State officials, delays in presenting political parties’ accounts and party financing through anonymous donations.
“Although 98% of deputies have presented declarations of interests in the last five years, Portugal does not monitor the disclosure of interests to ministers, high-level civil servants and high-level judges”, reads the anti-corruption report of the Organization for Cooperation and Economic Development (OECD).
The OECD says Portugal defines the circumstances and relationships that may lead to situations of conflict of interest for public officials, as well as institutional responsibilities, compliance and verification procedures for declarations of interests, but “does not promote the monitoring of these interests”.
Regarding the financing of political parties, the report states that Portugal prohibits contributions from foreign states, foreign companies and public companies, but that anonymous donations are permitted within a certain limit.
According to the document, all political parties presented accounts related to the elections within the deadlines defined by law for the last two electoral cycles. “However, not all political parties presented annual accounts within the deadlines defined by national legislation during the last five years”, he highlights.
Compared to OECD standards on public information, which include access to information and open data, the report states that Portugal meets 89% of the regulatory criteria and 65% in practice, compared to the OECD average of 67% and 62%, respectively.
Regarding corruption risk auditing, the OECD says that “although regulations for the implementation of internal control are applicable to all government institutions, there are no established definitions of internal audit and internal control that are applicable to all government institutions” .
The document also states that, despite all organizations being covered by internal audit, only 39% were audited in the last five years and adopted 84% of internal audit recommendations, “but only implemented 56%”.
The National Anti-Corruption Strategy 2020-2024 contains strategic objectives to mitigate integrity risks in human resources management, public financial management, internal control and risk management, public contracts, private sector, and to reduce fraud in the public sector .
But the OECD highlights that, although the strategy includes indicators at the level of results for public integrity objectives, it does not establish target values for these indicators and does not include the identification of existing risks to public integrity.
Although the strategy has a publicly available action plan in place, which includes objectives with specific indicators at the level of results, basic targets and a list of activities, the OECD criticizes that there is “no monitoring report” on this action plan. .
