There are urgent calls from within Latin America for improved transparency and accountability throughout the region. This was the view of participants at a CoST seminar co-hosted by EUROSOCIAL and CoST in London this month.

The half day event was attended by senior delegates from three Latin American countries and included representatives from the Secretariat of Transparency, the Attorney General’s Office and Business Oversight Agency of Colombia, the Attorney General’s Office and Ministry of Justice of El Salvador, and the Secretariat of Transparency of Ecuador. Also in attendance was a representative from CEDDET, the public Spanish foundation that provides technical assistance to EUROSOCIAL.

EUROSOCIAL works with Latin American governments on anti-corruption policies, complaints and whistleblowing. The CoST event formed a major part of EUROSOCIAL’s visitor’s programme to England and Sweden.

According to Isabel Roser, Senior Advisor on CSR at F. Ceddet-Eurosocial Program (UE), CoST is a “pioneering” programme with “the capacity to be one of the greatest inspirations for fighting corruption”. Eurosocial aims to work with CoST to create a strong Euro-Latin-American knowledge network to increase transparency and accountability and to fight corruption in Latin America.