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Who Gets Prosecuted? Mapping Europe’s Fight Against Domestic and Cross-Border Corruption
The comparative report on the assessment and explanation of enforcement capabilities and performance of contrast of domestic and cross-border corruption in the EU is a first, design-oriented version of Deliverable which as the purpose to build the conceptual, methodological and data foundations for analysing how European criminal justice systems prevent, investigate, prosecute and sanction corruption,…
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Digital Transformation and Corruption: BridgeGap Maps Where AI Helps, Where the Gaps Remain
The research report by Aleksej Heinze, Alfredo Jimenez, Julien Hanoteau and Virginie Vial (KEDGE Business School), with contributions from Joras Ferwerda (Utrecht University) sets out a clear picture of how digital transformation, and especially artificial intelligence, is being discussed in anti-corruption research. It shows an area showing a real dynamic, which still depends on stronger…
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Machine Learning Detects Corruption Risk in Public Procurement
A case study on Danish public procurement contracts, 2016–2022 A new study from Utrecht University tests whether machine learning models can identify corruption risk in public procurement before a contract is awarded. The research applies twelve algorithms to 20,777 Danish procurement contracts covering the period 2016 to 2022. Its central finding is that the right…
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Political Finance in Europe: What Makes Transparency Enforcement So Tricky? – Data Story
Nicolas Soto Troncoso and Sofia Angeli In January 2026, the 11th Conference of the States Parties (CoSP) to the UN Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) adopted resolution 11/7 on preventing and combating corruption by enhancing transparency in the funding of political parties, electoral candidatures, and campaigns. The resolution, the first of its kind dedicated to Article…
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How Washington is Weaponizing Anticorruption Law – New Publication
BridgeGap team member Lucio Picci, together with Lorenzo Crippa and Edmund J. Malesky, has co-authored a new article in Foreign Affairs titled “How Washington Is Weaponizing Anticorruption Law.” The piece examines how U.S. anticorruption enforcement — historically presented as neutral and rule-based — is increasingly being used as a strategic policy instrument in international economic…
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Epstein Files: Why is Europe More Affected than the US? – Data Story
Alina Mungiu Pippidi First and foremost, people can legitimately ask: what good are the corruption indexes — the CPI, the IPI, and the rest — if it seems that number 10 (US) exercises undue influence over corrupt officials in number 2 (Norway) and number 18 (UK, which in the IPI has already backslid next to…
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How is Russia’s War Reshaping the European Far-Right? – New Publication
A new paper by Adam Holesch and the IBEI-BridgeGap team follows the positions of Russia of European parties. In the early phase of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, political unity in the European Parliament reached unusually high levels. Supporting Ukraine became the dominant norm, and deviating from it carried significant reputational and electoral costs. However,…
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Qatar Gate, a Missed Opportunity for Public Opinion as Well as Justice – New Publication
A new study by the BridgeGap team at the University of Perugia shows that the social media landscape around QatarGate was not fundamentally different from the era dominated by traditional media. Institutional actors — political and media alike — contributed to producing a biased and, at times, instrumentalized narrative on social platforms.Once again, the main…
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International Anti-Corruption Cooperation and the Weaponisation of Cross-Border Undue Influence in a Multipolar World – New Deliverable
The Deliverable 3.3 is authored by Jacint Jordana (UPF-IBEI), Elisabeth de Vega (IBEI), and Adam Holesch (IBEI), and released in December 2025. The report focuses on the global governance of anti-corruption policies and the rising weaponisation of cross-border undue influence within a fragmented international arena. Its primary objective is to systematically map and classify the…
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Andrej Babiš’s Return and Europe’s Corruption Dilemma – Data Story
Massimo Privitera, University of Antwerp Photo Credits: Financial Times Czech voters have once again placed their trust in Andrej Babiš, a billionaire populist whose career has been shadowed by protracted legal battles over allegations of defrauding European Union funds. His ANO party brought him back to power, despite a fraud trial looming over him and…
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Do social media increase polarization in the debate about corruption? – New Publication
While legacy media have received increasing attention in the literature on media and corruption in recent years, the role of digital media, and in particular social media, is still an open question in corruption and anti-corruption studies. In their paper “Bias and Polarization in the Qatargate Scandal: A Social Media Perspective” (Marchetti et al., 2024),…