Growing concerns over the level of corruption in the education sectors across Europe have prompted the Council of Europe to launch a new initiative focused on preventing corruption and misconduct in academia. Introduced at the 7th Prague Forum on Education in Europe on 1 October 2015, the Pan-European Platform on Ethics, Transparency and Integrity in Education (ETINED) will bring together experts from 50 states that have joined the European Cultural Convention of the Council of Europe. This network of experts will be supported by the know-how of specialists from Transparency International, UNESCO and other organisations active in anti-corruption.

The platform will work towards achieving three goals: developing adequate solutions for corruption in education, sharing information on best practices for transparency and integrity, and promoting ethical principles in education. To these ends, a number of activities are planned over the next two years, including an international seminar on plagiarism and a comparative study on integrity policies in higher education across the 50 states. 

The initiative comes in light of a number of high-profile plagiarism cases involving top-ranking government officials in several European states in recent years. Other common forms of corruption in the education sector include the selling of diplomas and the embezzlement of funds. With 34 percent of Europeans perceiving their education sector to be corrupt according to a recent Transparency International survey, this issue certainly merits action.