For many years corruption was not a topic for political action in Romania, Croatia and Moldova. Though opinion polls and international organizations were warning about the importance of this phenomenon, the illegal benefits obtained by people who found themselves in positions of power through corruption blocked for many years all initiatives to address the issue. Things started to change only when countries decided to move towards integration into the European Union thus accepting the standards in terms of rule of law.

Conflicts of interest and incompatibilities constitute one of the most important challenges to the establishment of rule of law in South East Europe. Successfully tackling these phenomena is a key issue in the relationship between the countries in the region and the European Union.

The current report discusses in details the evolution of the public policy on conflicts of interests in three countries – Romania, Croatia and Moldova – analyzing also the impact of the international agenda in this field. The overall conclusion is that reform in this sensitive field would have been impossible without the help from the international conditionalities because of the huge resistance from the establishment. Conflicts of interests are a very profitable area of undue conduct and not very well understood within the society at large.

Expert Forum 2012