The meeting focused on three topics that Saudi Arabia, holding the G20 presidency, identified as the 2020 priorities:
- development of national anti-corruption strategies;
- promoting integrity in privatization and public-private partnerships;
- promoting public sector integrity through the use of information and communications technologies.
The Presidency presented draft high level principles on each of these topics that were agreed upon by the group following a discussion of amendments. After a silence procedure the drafts will be submitted to the G20 sherpas for adoption.
The G20 ACWG meeting was preceded by a one-day side event where invited scholars, experts, representatives of the business community and NGOs could express their opinion on the abovementioned topics. A separate session of the side event was dedicated to the measurement of corruption: this issue is supposed to become one of the priorities of the Italian G20 Presidency in 2021. Italy also initiated a review of the existing approaches towards the measurement of corruption and the assessment of effectiveness of anti-corruption reforms, which is planned to begin shortly.
The next ACWG meeting under the Saudi Presidency is tentatively scheduled for June 2020.
