Donald Trump’s administration has withdrawn the United States from the Council of Europe’s anti-corruption monitoring body, arguing that paying to belong to the multilateral group no longer serves US interests.
The US formally notified the Strasbourg-based organization on Monday that it was leaving the Group of States against Corruption, known as Greco – the latest step in a broader effort by the administration to pull back from international bodies it regards as inefficient, overreaching, or out of step with its priorities.
A US state department spokesperson said the decision followed a review of US involvement in the body, and marks a shift from countries holding each other to shared standards towards Washington acting on its own.
“The US Department of State’s primary responsibility is to protect the American people,” the spokesperson said. “The United States is focused on combating criminal threats that directly threaten Americans, including corruption undermining American security and prosperity.”
The spokesperson said the department had concluded that membership, which carries an annual financial contribution, “does not provide tangible benefits to US national security”.
“The era of writing blank checks to international bureaucracies is over,” the spokesperson added. The department would instead prioritize “higher-impact tools” against corruption, including visa restrictions, sanctions and targeted foreign assistance to strengthen foreign criminal investigations into corruption that directly threatens US security and prosperity.
The withdrawal began as an internal state department proposal dated 1 September, according to a document seen by the Guardian. It’s unclear how much the US has paid so far, but Greco’s total budget for 2025 was about €3m, or about $3.4m, funded by contributions from its 48 members.
Greco was established in 1999 to check whether countries live up to the Council of Europe’s anti-corruption standards. The US has taken part since 2000, making it one of two non-European members, alongside Kazakhstan. Russia left the watchdog in 2023, and Belarus followed in 2024.
In response to the exit, the Council of Europe described the US as a “valuable contributor” to Greco and said the group “remains open to resuming cooperation with the United States in the future in support of shared efforts to prevent corruption, strengthen integrity and uphold the rule of law”.
The intergovernmental organization has no power to fine or penalize states, instead relying on members to review one another, publish recommendations, and later check to see whether they acted on them.
Its record, as such, has been mixed. In its latest annual report, Greco said states had fully or partly implemented almost 90% of its recommendations on preventing corruption among parliamentarians, judges and prosecutors. Parliamentarians remained the weakest area, with 15.5% of recommendations still unimplemented, compared with 8.6% for judges and 5.7% for prosecutors. Some cases have dragged on for more than a decade, and Greco’s monitoring has found significant shortcomings in a number of countries.
The US itself was assessed in a report published in December 2023. Greco credited Washington with having strong laws and institutions for preventing corruption in the executive branch, but said it lacked an overarching strategy for tackling corruption and pointed out that the president and vice-president are exempt from most of the federal conflict-of-interest rules that apply to other executive branch officials.
Greco made 10 recommendations to the US, including developing an overarching anti-corruption strategy for the executive branch. Its fifth-round evaluation page does not currently show a published US compliance report following that assessment.
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