About
Transparency
An organisation that sits between public authorities and the companies that want to sell to them has to be able to explain exactly what it does, who pays for it and what that money does not buy. This page is that explanation.
01 Independence from the European Union
ESCA is an independent membership association. It is not an institution, agency or body of the European Union and does not represent the European Union.
ESCA does not use European Union emblems, does not present itself as speaking for any EU institution, and does not describe its assessments as official European guidance. Where ESCA holds a grant or contract from an EU body, that relationship is published here.
Any material that suggests otherwise, from any source including a member, is a misrepresentation and can be reported to the ESCA office.
02 Decision-making principles
Decisions that affect what ESCA publishes, assesses or recommends are taken by ESCA staff and governance bodies, not by members, partners or funders.
Where a decision affects a specific member or partner, anyone with an interest in the outcome withdraws from it and the withdrawal is recorded.
Assessments produced for a city belong to that city. ESCA does not publish a readiness score without the authority deciding to publish it.
03 Membership principles
Membership or sponsorship does not guarantee recommendation, procurement access or preferential treatment.
Governance rights sit with public authority members. Industry members and strategic partners have no vote and no board seat.
Membership does not affect what ESCA publishes. No member sees an Intelligence item before publication, and no member can require an item to be changed or withdrawn. Factual corrections are made on evidence, from any source.
Membership can be terminated for presenting ESCA as an endorsement, approaching authorities through ESCA channels about a live procurement, or breaching the market dialogue rules.
04 Funding principles
ESCA is funded by membership fees, fees for services such as readiness assessments and Academy programmes, and strategic partnerships.
No single funder may account for a share of income large enough to make ESCA dependent on it. Where concentration approaches that point, it is disclosed.
ESCA does not accept funding conditional on a finding, a recommendation, or the inclusion or exclusion of any organisation.
ESCA takes no commission, success fee or share of contract value on any project it has worked on.
05 Sponsorship principles
Sponsorship of an event or a publication is disclosed on the item itself, not only in an annual report.
Sponsors do not select speakers, approve programmes, review content before publication or receive attendee data.
Content in the Academy procurement, EU funding and AI programmes is not sponsored by suppliers, and suppliers do not contribute to that curriculum.
A sponsorship that could not be described openly on this website is one ESCA will not accept.
06 Conflict of interest policy
Staff, board members and engaged experts declare commercial relationships, directorships, shareholdings and paid advisory roles relevant to ESCA work.
An expert who works on a project cannot subsequently bid for it, and cannot advise a supplier bidding for it.
ESCA does not bid for work it has helped a city specify, and does not act as a subcontractor to a supplier bidding for such work.
Declarations are held by the ESCA office and are available to any authority an individual works with.
07 Procurement and recommendation independence
ESCA operates no approved supplier list, no vendor certification and no recommendation service.
Market dialogue is published in advance, open to any supplier whether or not they are a member, recorded, and its questions and answers are published to everyone.
Once specifications are being drafted, market dialogue closes. ESCA holds no private conversations with suppliers about a project after that point.
Where a procurement procedure is open, ESCA cannot forward submissions, answer on behalf of the authority or introduce suppliers. The official portal is the only valid channel.
08 Corrections and complaints
Factual errors are corrected and the correction is noted on the item, with its date. Items are not silently edited.
Complaints about ESCA conduct, including any suggestion that a member received preferential treatment, go to the ESCA office and are answered in writing.
Where a complaint concerns a member of staff or the board, it is handled by a person with no involvement in the matter.
09 Current disclosures
Published funding relationships, income concentration and sponsorship arrangements will be listed here, updated annually.
No verified disclosures have been published yet. This section is deliberately empty rather than filled with illustrative figures: an unverified transparency statement is worse than no statement.
10 Raising a concern
Write to [email protected] with the subject line Transparency, or by post to the registered office. Complaints are answered in writing.
Integral Business Center, Bulevardul Pipera nr. 1-IA, 077190 Voluntari, Ilfov County, Romania.
Accountability
If something on this site does not match what ESCA does, say so.
Transparency policies are only worth anything if the people they protect can challenge them. Complaints about ESCA conduct are answered in writing.