The Defence and Security Programme has established and maintained links with the major European and US defence corporations in order to raise the profile of the impact of corrupt practices and to introduce mechanisms to reduce and eventually eliminate corruption within the industry.

Our team has helped to establish the voluntary European Common Industry Standards (CIS) for anti-corruption through the auspices of ASD, and the International Forum on Business Ethical Conduct (IFBEC) that will provide a platform for anti-corruption discussion and initiatives on a more global scale, although at this stage it involves primarily US and EU companies. Building on the CIS as well as the Defence Industrial Initiative of the United States, IFBEC’s purpose is also to entrench the commitment of defence industry to ethical business standards and equitable competition rules.

However, there is a need to take a next step in pushing the anti-corruption agenda with industry, such that all of defence industry takes the corruption issue seriously and proactively works towards its elimination.  This entails both a widening of industrial involvement in anti-corruption initiatives beyond the US-EU borders, and deepening of industrial involvement to include national industry associations, individual companies, and small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Furthermore, there is a need to establish a regular review and monitoring mechanism for ethics standards, which would ensure that these instruments are truly robust, if voluntary, counter-corruption tools.

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