Deliverable 4.3 “European transparency legislation observatory” or European Public Accountability Mechanisms (EuroPAM) is a website (http://europam.eu/) that presents the results of. D1.2 “Database of legal and regulatory norms” that was submitted by the Hertie School of Governance in the end of February 2016. EuroPAM is a database of legal and regulatory norms for 34 European countries.1 EuroPAM is an extension of the Public Accountability Mechanisms Initiative (PAM) of the World Bank, which is a primary data collection effort that produces assessments of in-law efforts to enhance the transparency of public administration and the accountability of public officials. The EuroPAM database serves as a European transparency legislation observatory that is based on the PAM indicators for financial disclosure, conflict of interest restrictions, and freedom of information, while also adding data on public procurement, and updating the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) database on political financing.
EuroPAM in-law data measures the comprehensiveness of a country’s legal framework in four spheres of administrative transparency and accountability: financial disclosure, conflict of interest, political finance, and freedom of information. Indicators for these mechanisms are based on internationally-accepted legal standards, established by organizations such as the World Bank, Article 19, Access Info Europe, Global Integrity, and the Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. For public procurement, EuroPAM in-law data assesses both the extent of the procurement framework and its adherence to norms established by the European Commission.
To ensure the reliability of in-law data, a rigorous and systematic approach was applied to data collection and analysis. Researchers produced summaries of the legal provisions collected from primary source documents, in the original language where possible. In cases where further consultation was required to clarify legal codes, the data was sent to technical in-country experts for feedback on accuracy and relevance. The final data is released in both quantitative and qualitative form for policy and research purposes. Several rounds of data collection are envisioned from 2012 onwards. The exception to this is public procurement, for which data collection began in 2015.
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