Welcome to BridgeGap !

Have you asked yourselves if corruption in Europe is on the increase, decrease, or comfortably stable? Or if our European directives and rules really make an impact? And why did globalization not manage to reduce corruption, despite unleashing more competition than ever before? BridgeGap is the kind of project which will answer such questions, using a new generation of fact based indicators (as one can find on corruptionrisk.org or Integrity Watch) and theory to go beyond the old illusions that corruption is just an isolated pathology and can be dealt with by lawyers.

– Professor Alina Mungiu-Pippidi (LUISS Guido Carli University & BridgeGap Principal Investigator)

BridgeGap is a new Horizon Europe funded joint research initiative whose key goals aim at a) achieving an overall and deeper understanding of corruption from an interdisciplinary perspective, b) increasing knowledge and data on political corruption (and other undue influences) as well as c) support and further stimulate the potential usage of modern technologies to detect, prevent and fight corruption. BridgeGap kicked off on 1st of January 2024, and will last for 48 months to 31st December 2027.

BRIDGEGAP aims to address knowledge gaps regarding the penetration of corruption in open societies across borders. It achieves this through innovative models that measure corruption levels across countries and over time, as well as by creating social network maps. The project also evaluates and proposes solutions to digital transparency gaps, exploring issues related to the use and misuse of technology in corruption and anti-corruption efforts. Furthermore, it assesses public accountability and anti-corruption regulations across EU member states and candidate countries to identify regulatory and impact gaps, thus bridging the academia-policy divide in corruption studies.

BridgeGap treats corruption as a policy problem and focuses on understanding both the domestic vulnerabilities and the cross-border factors that undermine control of corruption. At The Lisbon Council for Economic Competitiveness and Social Renewal, we are excited to coordinate the multidisciplinary research project reuniting former members of the ANTICORRP consortium who have continued to invest in the development of data commons allowing corruption understanding and monitoring on the basis of objective data. With new academic partners who published novel methods to measure money-laundering, anthropologists and criminologists who pioneered corruption studies in liberal democracies. And IT groups like the Ukrainian organisation YouControl, the first to interconnect data enabling searches of the assets of sanctioned individuals through its algorithm Follow the Money.

– Marieke Willems, Senior Research Associate at The Lisbon Council and BridgeGap Project Coordinator)

The research conducted by BridgeGap will result in academic publications and the development of interactive analytical and research platforms, including comparative law repositories like EU Compass and European Transparency Index, and Follow the Money search engines. All data gathered will be transparently displayed on the project’s website as a Data Hub, providing end users with access to investigation and analytical tools used by project researchers, while also encouraging crowd-sourcing and offering online tutorials. The project will also roll out educational tools (more specifically a MOOC platform) targeting university students, investigative journalists, government and civil society experts to properly train them in the use of investigative and analytical tools created in the project, in the battle against corruption.

BridgeGap is a complex consortium of 15 renowned Partners, which can boast a multitude of disciplines and practitioners, each bringing its distinct expertise to this collaborative venture. The academic coordination and management are designed to keep excellent coordination and a unitary approach in scientific matters combined with a simple, efficient management. BridgeGap is coordinated by Marieke Willems, (Lisbon Council, Brussels) and the Project Principal Investigator, Professor Alina Mungiu-Pippidi (LUISS Guido Carli University, Roma) supported by the Steering Committee members in charge of academic coordination.

BridgeGap Consortium

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