EthicsComplianceForums (ECforums)

The Ethics & Compliance Forums is a series of itinerary events that has been initiated in 2016, after several years since the initial proposal. The main obstacles for organizing these big events were the limited number of professionals in Eastern Europe and the fact that the Ethics & Compliance market was underdeveloped in comparison with the American continent or Western Europe. Since then, the situation has changed completely and more and more events have been organized throughout Central and Eastern Europe. ECforums remain unique in this context due to 3 main elements: (1) their focus on know-how transfer, (2) the multi-stakeholder approach, involving the private, the public, the academic and civil sectors, and (3) the role played in advancing specific topics on the public agenda and on that of the professional community.

Currently, ECforums have only one format, i.e., the European Ethics & Compliance Forum (ECF EU), which is organized every two years, in the first half of November. Each edition hosts around 30 keynote speakers from various multinationals, international organizations, enforcement agencies and regulators, as well as civil society and academia. The estimated number of participants is around 150, coming as far as South Africa; increasing the size of the audience will affect the quality of the event, which will become basically just a networking opportunity, contrary to our interests in pushing the field of Ethics & Compliance further.

In 2016, a Romanian format was also provided: the Romanian Ethics & Compliance Forum took place on February 11. This format was discontinued in order to concentrate all efforts on the European format.