The Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) was established in 1999 to monitor the compliance of CoE member states with the anti-corruption standards and norms developed by the Council itself. These standards are contained in the legal instruments adopted by the Council of Europe on the fight against corruption - the Criminal Law Convention on Corruption and its Additional Protocol and the Civil Law Convention on Corruption - as well as in recommendations and resolutions adopted by the Committee of Ministers (in particular Resolution (97)24 on 20 Guiding Principles for the Fight against Corruption). The Group as of today (2024) has 49 states (the 46 member states of the CoE, Belarus, Kazakhstan and the United States). 

GRECO's main objective is to improve the capacity of States Parties to fight corruption through a dynamic process of mutual evaluation and ‘peer pressure’. GRECO helps identify existing gaps in national anti-corruption policies and encourages states to adopt the necessary legislative and institutional reforms to overcome them. GRECO is also a forum for sharing good practices in the prevention and detection of corruption. 

GRECO's monitoring system is divided into periodic thematic cycles and includes:

1. a ‘horizontal’ evaluation procedure, which involves all States Parties and ends with recommendations on necessary reforms in the legislative and institutional field; 
2. a ‘compliance’ procedure, the purpose of which is to assess the measures taken by individual states to implement the recommendations. 

Italy has been a member of GRECO since 30 June 2007.