These are the 15 measures Sánchez proposes to combat corruption.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez attended the extraordinary plenary session on corruption being held this Wednesday in the Congress of Deputies, loaded with a battery of measures he hopes will appease his parliamentary colleagues and strengthen his term of office, which has been in jeopardy following the scandal involving the alleged commissions charged for awarding public works contracts, affecting the last two members of the PSOE's organizational secretaries.

"I am here to regain the trust of the parliamentary groups that support the progressive coalition government 's drive toward executive action, to dispel any legitimate doubts that citizens following this appearance may have, by sharing everything I know and explaining what we are going to do to overcome this crisis," Sánchez declared.

The strategy involves submitting to Parliament the approval of a State Plan to Combat Corruption , comprising 15 measures. The plan, which the Executive has designed jointly with the OECD's Department of Anti-Corruption, Integrity and Governance , has been reviewed after listening to the other parliamentary groups and civil society experts. Sources from the Moncloa office also detail proposals from the Open Government Forum and the Council of Europe's Group of States against Corruption, as well as recommendations from the European Commission .

"The Plan will represent the greatest boost to preventing, combating, and addressing corruption that has been implemented in recent decades in Spain, and the goal is to place our country at the forefront of the continent," Sánchez stated, detailing the five pillars of the plan.

Prevention

The first axis is "risk prevention and strengthening of controls against corruption" and includes six measures.

1. First, an independent Public Integrity Agency will be established, which will assume key functions in the prevention, monitoring, and prosecution of corrupt practices. It will independently coordinate the fight against corruption.

2. Secondly, the Executive proposes an extension to the entire Administration of the methodology applied to the allocation of Next Generation Funds to improve the auditing and control of funds.

3. The third measure involves introducing Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications into the Public Sector Procurement Platform to automate and optimize the identification of anomalous patterns or signs of fraud .

4. The fourth point involves requiring anti-corruption compliance systems for companies wishing to contract with public authorities and the implementation of integrity pacts for certain public contracts, as other European countries already do.

5. The fifth initiative is to promote the new Open Administration Law , which will strengthen the obligation of active transparency, establish early warning mechanisms, and update the State Transparency Portal . Random and annual asset audits will be implemented for senior officials throughout their term.

6. Sixth, oversight of political parties will be strengthened. This includes requiring parties and foundations with public funding exceeding €50,000 to conduct external and independent audits; increasing transparency in private donations and funding, reducing the threshold for publishing donations to €2,500 and the deadline for publication to one month after receipt; and passing a Law on Transparency and Integrity of Stakeholders.

Protect whistleblowers

7. The second pillar of the plan is to improve protection for whistleblowers in corruption cases and includes a central measure. It involves including in the new Criminal Procedure Law the requirement that anyone who goes directly to the Prosecutor's Office, the Police, or a Judge to report acts of corruption be provided with full guarantees of confidentiality, protection, and legal support.

In this regard, companies will be required to have internal reporting channels , and we will oblige all public administrations to incorporate these channels into a general institutional integrity system.

Fight against corruption

The third pillar, which seeks to strengthen the state's capacity to investigate, prosecute, and punish corruption, consists of five other measures.

8. The eighth proposal in the package is the creation of specialized sections for crimes against public administration within the new lower courts, staffed by specialized judges. This will help streamline judicial proceedings and increase their effectiveness. The proposal seeks to grant preferential status and create a summary procedure for cases involving public officials.

9. The ninth action seeks to strengthen the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office with additional resources and to submit to the Cortes Generales the draft Criminal Procedure Law, which will include a structural reform of the criminal investigation model, assigning investigations to prosecutors instead of judges.

10. The tenth point of the strategy is to toughen penalties for crimes against public administration in the Criminal Code and double the statute of limitations, along with increasing fines for corrupt companies, calculating them not on profits obtained, but on their annual income.

11. The plan continues with the implementation of an exclusion system and "blacklists" to prevent companies convicted of corruption from continuing to contract with the government.

12. Twelfth, it is suggested that within political parties, sanctions for accounting violations should be toughened and public subsidies withdrawn from those who maintain individuals convicted of corruption on their lists, structures, or governing bodies.

Repair

The fourth axis seeks the recovery of assets stolen through corruption and includes two initiatives.

13. On the one hand, an increase in resources and staff is planned for the Asset Recovery and Management Office , which is responsible for locating and managing ill-gotten assets. In parallel, its coordination with courts, prosecutors' offices, and the European Public Prosecutor's Office will be optimized.

14. In turn, the introduction of the figure of administrative or preventive confiscation is proposed, which will allow the seizure of assets linked to criminal activities without the need for a prior criminal conviction, preventing those responsible from hiding or disposing of stolen money before justice arrives.

Cultural change

The fifth and final axis involves generating a true culture of integrity and incorporates one last measure.

15. The final initiative seeks to conduct annual demographic studies on the perception and direct experience of corruption in Spain , launch citizen awareness campaigns, and strengthen training for public employees in integrity and prevention.

Commitment

"We will comply down to the last comma," Sánchez stated, announcing an agreement with the OECD to promote a monitoring and evaluation system that will report on progress at 12 and 24 months and issue a technical report that will be made public.