The Project State Owned Companies – Preventing Corruption and State Capture aimed to study the factors and the level of corruption in state-owned companies and the size of phenomena such state capture in the European Union. Four EU member states were studied: Romania, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Italy.
The leader of the consortium was the Romanian Center for European Policies, with a membership from: Freedom House Romania, Expert Forum Association, Amapola Progetii (Italy), Risk Monitor (Bulgaria) and Candole Partners (Czech Republic). Consequently were established objective indicators for assessing state corruption and clientelism. At the same time was realized an analysis of the impact of anti-corruption mechanisms of the European Union in the four states studied, the ultimate goal being to identify and propose political and administrative tools to prevent and combat state capture in state enterprises in European and national levels.
The nationally defined information was analysed and debated in local workshops, and policies to combat the problem. The set of good practices and recommendations were organized internationally for the European public through information materials, a workshop and a conference in Brussels.