Five European Anti-Corruption Bodies Call for an Integrity Pact on Defence Spending, as Portugal Delays Its Conflict-of-Interest Form to 2027
MENAC and its Italian, French, Hungarian and Slovenian counterparts say defence money must not come at the expense of transparency. At home, the declaration civil servants should sign has now been postponed four times.
Portugal's anti-corruption watchdog and four of its European counterparts warned on Thursday that the rush of money into defence "must not come at the expense of transparency", and asked governments to treat integrity as part of military readiness rather than an obstacle to it.
The Mecanismo Nacional Anticorrupção (National Anti-Corruption Mechanism, MENAC) promoted the text, a Joint Declaration on Integrity in Defence Investment. It was signed by MENAC, Italy's National Anti-Corruption Authority, the French Anti-Corruption Agency, Hungary's Integrity Authority and Slovenia's Commission for the Prevention of Corruption, according to Lusa. Other countries can still sign.
"It is the first corruption-prevention initiative on defence matters carried out at European Union level," MENAC's president, José Mouraz Lopes, told the news agency. Work on it began about two months ago, he said, after the agencies looked at "situations that occurred in the past" and at the risks created by the "large financial involvement" of the EU budget in defence for every member state.
What the declaration asks for
"Safeguarding integrity is not an obstacle to strengthening defence capabilities; it is an essential condition for achieving them," the declaration reads. Spending public money efficiently and to the highest standards, it adds, "protects public resources, strengthens citizens' trust and, ultimately, increases the effectiveness and credibility of defence itself".
Mouraz Lopes said each country will turn the statement into concrete measures on public procurement, conflicts of interest and financial irregularities. For Portugal, MENAC proposes three:
- an "integrity pact" binding the Ministry of Defence together with the other public and private bodies involved in the investments;
- monitoring of the investments throughout their execution, a period of "around five years";
- checks by the sectoral inspectorates-general on the corruption-prevention plans, codes of conduct and training that the Regime Geral de Prevenção da Corrupção (General Regime for the Prevention of Corruption, RGPC) already requires.
The sums at stake are large. In February the Council of the EU approved Portugal's plan to borrow 5.8 billion euros for defence capabilities under SAFE (Security Action for Europe), the instrument the European Commission proposed in March 2025 to lend member states up to 150 billion euros on long, cheap terms. The government's wider defence programme runs from new frigates to a state-backed munitions factory.
The conflict-of-interest form that keeps slipping
One of the tools the RGPC relies on is still not in force. Article 13 of the regime says board members, managers and staff of public bodies must sign a declaration that they have no conflict of interest whenever they take part in four kinds of procedure: public procurement; grants, subsidies and benefits; planning, environmental, commercial and industrial licences; and sanctions proceedings.
The model for that declaration was approved by Portaria n.º 185/2024/1 of 14 August 2024. The government has since pushed its entry into force back four times, most recently through Portaria n.º 345-B/2026/1 of 14 August 2026, which moves it to 31 July 2027. MENAC set this out in a clarification note dated 15 September and posted on its website on Wednesday. The note says its own Recommendation n.º 4/2025, which guides how Article 13 should be applied, will only take full effect on that date.
A reminder from the courtroom
The "situations that occurred in the past" were on display the same day. In the Tempestade Perfeita (Perfect Storm) trial at Lisbon's Central Criminal Court, where 73 defendants answer charges over defence contracts awarded between 2018 and 2021, former Secretary of State for National Defence Jorge Seguro Sanches testified about the 2020 works at the old Belém Military Hospital, carried out so it could take in mild Covid-19 patients.
According to Público, Seguro Sanches, who has not been charged, said the job cost almost 3.2 million euros including VAT against a maximum of 750,000 euros, and that the government did not know in advance. "There were awards that were not communicated to the government," he said, adding that they were not reported to the Tribunal de Contas (Court of Auditors) either, as the law required. Former Defence Minister João Gomes Cravinho is now due to testify by video call on 7 October.
