During the CoR CLARE contact Group meeting in Messina, Mr Dariusz Wrobel, Mayor of Opole Lubelskie and EA representative to this Group said during the meeting on the corruption: Ever since antiquity, corruption has been one of the most widespread and insidious of social evils. The World Bank refers to corruption as “the single greatest obstacle to economic and social development”. Corruption increases poverty by reducing economic growth, skewing government expenditure in favour of the rich and well-connected.

In order to improve the fight against the corruption at the national and regional level, civil society and all other initiatives need moral, financial and material support from government, donors and other institutions to carry out their work. In democracy states, the level of corruption should be at minimum level although according to the relevant data this is not the case in most of the EU countries.