US Quits European Anti-Corruption Panel

Washington — The Trump administration has pulled the United States out of GRECO, the Council of Europe's Group of States against Corruption, the Strasbourg-based organization said on 29 September, after Washington formally notified it of the decision.

GRECO is a peer-review body created in 1999 to monitor whether member countries meet the Council of Europe's anti-corruption standards. Membership is not limited to European Union states. The United States joined in 2000 and had taken part since then. According to the Council of Europe and Associated Press reporting, only Russia and Belarus had left GRECO before this withdrawal.

A U.S. official confirmed to the Associated Press that the notification was submitted on Monday, 28 September, speaking on condition of anonymity ahead of a public State Department announcement. As of the opened AP and India Today reports, that public State Department release had not yet been cited in the same stories.

What the Council said

"The United States has participated in GRECO since 2000 and has been a valuable contributor to its work and to the exchange of experience and good practice in preventing and combating corruption," the Council of Europe said. "GRECO 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."

Under GRECO's founding rules, a withdrawal notice given in the first nine months of the financial year generally takes effect at the end of that financial year. The September notification therefore points toward an end-of-2026 effective date under that ordinary reading of the statute; the Council's public statement emphasized the notice itself and left the door open for a future return.

Wider pullback

The move fits a pattern of U.S. exits from multilateral bodies that the administration says exceed their mandates, are inefficient, or do not adapt to U.S. policy. The United States has already left the World Health Organization and the U.N. Human Rights Council in this term, and in January it withdrew from the Venice Commission, another Council of Europe advisory body on constitutional law. The GRECO announcement came about a week after the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe said the United States had declined to invite OSCE members to observe the November 2026 congressional midterm elections, a break from past U.S. practice.

What happens next

GRECO monitoring of U.S. compliance with Council of Europe anti-corruption instruments stops once withdrawal takes effect. The Council says the door stays open for a return. Congress was not required to approve this kind of executive notification to an international monitoring group. Allies that still sit in GRECO will continue peer reviews without a U.S. seat at the table.