HOW clean is the European Union? To its critics, Brussels is a cesspit of waste and fraud. To its supporters, it is often a check on rapacious governments at home. There is no shortage of scandals. In 1999 the Santer commission resigned over fraud, mismanagement and nepotism. In 2011 some MEPs were caught negotiating payments for proposing legislative amendments on behalf of journalists posing as lobbyists. In 2012 a still-murky affair over tobacco regulation brought down the health commissioner, John Dalli from Malta. Yet, as one Brussels lobbyist puts it, “We don’t have a Jack Abramoff,” the American influence-peddler jailed in 2006 for fraud, corruption and tax evasion in a far-reaching scandal involving American Indian casinos.

The European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) opens hundreds of cases every year, but does not say how many relate to corruption within the EU. The Court of Auditors worries about the “error rate” in the EU’s accounts, which stood at an enormous 4.8% of total spending in 2012. Still, the court is the first to note that irregularities are not a measure of waste or fraud, but of improperly allocated funds (perhaps caused by error or incompetence). And given that 80% of the money is spent by member governments, corruption is more likely at national level. The European Commission reckons some €120 billion ($165 billion) is lost to corruption every year across the EU, though that is just a guess.

Yet corruption, like tax evasion, has become politically charged, not least because the worst of the euro zone’s turmoil hit Greece, widely perceived as its most corrupt member. The doctrine that a country’s fiscal policy is of concern to its neighbours is expanding into the notion that its adherence to the rule of law is also the EU’s business. That is a big change for a club that has generally treated all members as honourable (though Romania and Bulgaria undergo special monitoring).

In February the commission published its first detailed report on corruption in each of the 28 EU members. It was a cautious document, offering much praise and couching criticism in terms of recommendations for improvement. There were no embarrassing comparative data or rankings. And there was a glaring gap: the report said nothing about corruption within EU institutions. The so-called “29th chapter” was mysteriously shelved. The EU may have a modest budget of just 1% of GDP, but it still spends more than most countries—roughly as much as Sweden.

Commission officials claim they could not pass judgment on themselves; better to wait for the EU to join the anti-corruption convention of the Council of Europe, a separate pan-European body. Yet the commission could have used internal watchdogs. Rumour has it that OLAF wrote a draft that was later buried. And on April 24th Transparency International (TI), an anti-corruption lobby group, published its own version of the 29th chapter. It too was written carefully, in the spirit of collaboration rather than confrontation. It concludes that “despite improvements to the overall framework, corruption risks persist at the EU level”. Even so, the European Parliament refused to co-operate. Parliamentary officials privately mutter that TI acted in a “high-handed” manner, demanding wholesale access to officials and documents. Coming from a self-righteous assembly that proclaims itself a champion of transparency, such obduracy is worrying.

TI’s report spares none of the institutions. The commission (the EU’s civil service) is accused of failing properly to use its power to blacklist corruption-tainted companies from bidding for EU contracts. The workings of the Council of Ministers (representing governments) were deemed to be opaque. The OLAF website urges officials to report fraud, with promises to protect whistle-blowers, but its own staff members do not have an external channel to report misconduct. Across the system, declarations of interest by senior EU figures are not routinely checked.

The parliament is another big concern. MEPs’ expenses are not properly audited, one reason why the UK Independence Party’s Nigel Farage is under fire in Britain for allegedly misusing them (and for employing his wife as his secretary). MEPs are meant to report expenses-paid trips, but not their contacts with lobbyists, even when they are presented with cut-and-paste amendments written up by external parties. Outside earnings below €5,000 do not have to be declared. And unlike other institutions, the parliament imposes no cooling-off period before MEPs can take up “revolving door” jobs with lobbying firms. Lobbyists, moreover, are poorly regulated. They are encouraged to sign a “voluntary” register, but the growing army of law firms in Brussels, many of them American, for the most part refuse to do so on the ground of preserving client confidentiality.

By which standard?

The European Parliament likes to compare itself to America’s Congress. Big money plays a lesser role in European politics. But ethical standards on lobbying in Brussels are often laxer than in Washington. In its broad sense, lobbying is a legitimate, even necessary, part of the democratic process of balancing competing interests. In a body as complex as the EU, where power is diffuse and decisions are the result of deals in multiple institutions, good lobbyists who know their way around the commission, council and parliament can be invaluable. Yet advocacy should take place openly, not in the dark.

The commission’s own polls find that trust in the EU is declining, with large majorities believing that corruption is widespread. Such disillusion will feed Euroscepticism in May’s European election. But if the EU fears that disclosure of shady practices may strengthen anti-EU parties, attempts to hide them can only make things worse. Precisely because the EU is more remote than national politics, it should hold itself to the highest standards.

Economist.com/blogs/charlemagne