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The Amthor affair, the Azerbaijan affair, the mask affair: Corruption scandals involving elected representatives in recent years – which, whilst deserving of punishment, have gone unpunished – have once again highlighted the need to make criminal law on corruption more effective in this area. However, the legal policy debate repeatedly reaches its limits, partly because there is too little knowledge in this country of foreign regulatory models that could serve as examples for reform. The project funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) ‘Criminal liability for public corruption under one roof? Opportunities offered by moving away from special criminal law for elected representatives’ will close this gap. It takes a comparative legal approach to the criminal law treatment of corruption involving elected representatives. The aim of the project is to examine in greater detail alternative legal approaches to regulating the criminal liability of elected representatives in cases of corruption. At the same time, the project aims to develop a reform proposal for Germany.

For the comparative legal analysis, the research team, led by Prof. Dr Erol Pohlreich, is examining various models for the treatment of corruption involving elected representatives under criminal and parliamentary law in 17 selected foreign legal systems. The data collected will be collated, analysed taking into account the specific features of the respective parliamentary legal systems, and systematically evaluated. The central question is whether and how the specific requirements of the elected office are taken into account at the level of substantive criminal law or criminal procedure law. The issues will also be discussed in July 2026 during workshops and in April 2027 at a final international conference with experts from the respective countries and legal fields, in order to evaluate the legal situation and practice in those jurisdictions.

The findings are intended to help identify possible reform approaches, as well as the associated opportunities and risks, and, on this basis, to draw up a draft proposal for the German legislature that can serve as a guide, particularly should the need for action arise in future, for example as a result of European requirements.