CEDR aspires to high ethical standards and integrity in all of its activities. CEDR’s office holders actively promote and robustly support the principles and challenge poor behaviour wherever it occurs.
These reinforce the long-standing principles of the CEDR research programme of “Trust, Understand, Commit”. They also underline our actions in relation to the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 16) to ".. build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels".
The rationale behind CEDR’s integrity objectives is to protect our interests in relation to:
Integrity in the project results – ensuring that experiments, results, data etc have not been compromised in any way that could undermine the confidence of CEDR or its members, its stakeholders or the public in the conclusions of the project.
Integrity of the market – ensuring no collusion between parties (including between the customers and bidders such as with respect to state aid rules) that interferes with the proper functioning of the market to deliver competition and value for money.
Integrity in the project’s financial conduct – ensuring that value for money of the project is not affected in by financial mismanagement in any way that results in lower quality performance, services etc…
CEDR can only exercise authority over CEDR research and consultancy projects. CEDR has no authority over national projects or EU projects. CEDR does maintain a legitimate interest where projects are associated with CEDR activities..
CEDR has no authority over EU research programmes, but many of our activities involve close cooperation with projects and CEDR members may rely on the results. From time-to-time, CEDR may support and/or sponsor such as activities and promote the outcomes.
The European Anti-Fraud Office or OLAF can investigate allegations of: fraud or other serious irregularities with a potentially negative impact for EU public funds and serious misconduct by Members or staff of EU Institutions and bodies. The scope of OLAF is generally limited to serious occurrences. Reports to OLAF can be made anonymously at Report fraud (europa.eu). In some case, it might be relevant to complaint to the EU Ombudsman in cases that involve maladministration without an impact on the EU budget. In some cases, CEDR can also report on your behalf; if project involves CEDR, there is sufficient evidence of wrongdoing, and it is necessary to protect your anonymity.
If you wish to report any concerning activities or practices on CEDR programmes or related activities, you can report here.
Please inform us with any proof of the discussions. Although you may wish to preserve your anonymity, you may wish to mention your organisation to ensure that it is not subsequently disqualified from bidding or other consequences.
Not necessarily, we may have contacted all projects because a report concerns an issue that we may want to address more widely, or because we are protecting the anonymity of a whistle-blower blower who may be in a different project.
It is not CEDR’s role to verify the financial and audit processes of individual contractors. Normally such activities should be reported to the management of the organisation concerned. However, we will take an interest in reports of any activities that would indicate that checks within the company are routinely lax and might the price of a contract to be inflated (even if the contract was awarded on price). Such activities may also be symptomatic of wider fraud in the bidding process if an entity is sufficiently confident that its bid would win despite inflated costs.
Bias can be obvious or subtle. Clearly it can sometimes lead to a conflict of interest and CEDR processes seek to avoid this. For example, we seek to avoid any family or business connection (including through limits on revolving doors). Other more apparently innocuous opportunities for bias, such as preference for suppliers because it provides opportunities to use project meeting to visit family or friends can be limited through the normal travel rules of the respective CEDR members. If you wish to report suspicious decsions, please provide evidence.
The first step to establish is if this is just a marketing strategy or an attempt to misrepresent their relationship with CEDR and/or mislead or solicit favours. CEDR does not work with any privileged partners or suppliers. If any organisation states that they are a privileged partner in any way, this is not-true and they can be disqualified from bidding. You are encouraged to contact in such cases.
The first priority is to protect yourself, your career and your livelihood. Unless the activities are highly illegal and present a risk to others, please consider your actions carefully. If you report activities to CEDR, we will do our best to protect your anonymity. If you provide information and evidence, you may wish to remove elements that could be used to identify you.
The use of the business services of family members or close personal contacts for project services (including goods supplies, technical or hotel/catering services) could indicate a conflict of interest comprising the price or quality of the project. CEDR may ask for evidence from the organisation in such cases likely to affect any aspects of the integrity of the project.
This does not mean that there was wrongdoing. In the first case, we suggest that you talk with the CEDR member. It may be that the EU project experience was essential for the national project and the NRA was not aware of your interest/proposal in the EU project. Some NRAs have procedures to evaluate potential EU proposals and ensure that different national interests are supported, but there are no EU rules on this. CEDR is working with its members to develop better alignment between the rules for national procurement and EU programme.
PIARC Integrity tool kit
EU Transparency Register (europa.eu) Code of conduct
Practical recommendations for public officials’ interaction with interest representatives | Correspondence | European Ombudsman (europa.eu)
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