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This report presents the results of a comprehensive mapping exercise of the scope and quality of public procurement and linked information in 35 European jurisdictions: 28 European Union member states, 6 EU neighbouring countries and the European Commission. Part I analyses the public procurement information hosted in national platforms and made available online for the average user. This analysis enables the classification and comparison of countries along a series of dimensions, such as the amount of historical data on individual tenders, the scope of tender documentation publicly available, the fragmentation of procurement information sources, and the degree of machine-readability of tender announcements, among several others. Parts II and III of the report complement the information on procurement processes and outcomes with information on the two main actors involved in these processes: bidders and buyers. In this context, part II maps existing relevant data on private companies and part III follows with data on the governmental units acting as contracting authorities in each of our 35 jurisdiction. Discussing information linked to public procurement tendering data goes beyond the description of this deliverable in the Description of Work.
This paper can provide a comprehensive review of quantitative corruption proxies, conceptualise how different indicators capture different aspects of corruption, and identify gaps in the measurement landscape. Institutionalised, well-established corruption in government contracting aims to bypass fair and open competition in order to allocate contracts to companies belonging to the corrupt group. This requires at least i) corrupt transactions allowing for rent generation, ii) particularistic relations underpinning collective action of corrupt groups; iii) organisations enabling rent allocation (public organisations); and iv) organisations extracting corrupt rents (private companies). These four requirements of corrupt contracting serve as a framework for the review. We find that there is a surprisingly wide array of indicators validated in particular contexts, leaving generalisability unclear. It is also suggested that the academic literature has largely been preoccupied with one or the other type of corruption proxies such as personal connections without recognising their complementarities. Given the clandestine and often complex character of corrupt deals, a comprehensive measurement approach is advocated where each indicator sheds light on different aspects of the same corrupt phenomena.