Public control over public authorities through digital technologies as a tool for reducing economic losses from corruption: European experience and proposals for ukraine

The article examines public control over public authorities exercised by means of digital technologies as an economic and legal mechanism for reducing corruption losses of the national economy. The relevance of the study is twofold. Firstly, the scale of such losses is considerable; for the European Union, it is estimated at between 179–990 billion EUR of GDP annually. Secondly, it is vital to consider the needs of Ukraine's post-war reconstruction, in which the credibility of accountability mechanisms directly determines the volume and cost of available international financing. The purpose of the article is threefold: firstly, to reveal the dual administrative-legal and economic nature of digital public control; secondly, to assess, on the basis of European experience and verified empirical data, its impact on reducing corruption-related losses; and thirdly, to formulate proposals for improving Ukraine's legislation. The research methods employed encompass the dialectical method, analytical and synthetic approaches, statistical analysis, economic and legal modelling based on agency and transaction cost categories, and a comparative legal approach to EU law, Member States' legislation and Ukrainian legislation. The main results show that digital public control has the characteristics of a public good and economies of scale. One-off public investments in open data reduce the marginal cost of each subsequent act of civic monitoring to almost zero. Meanwhile, e-procurement transparency in Ukraine measurably lowered final contract prices. An effective European model is based on four principles: the openness of data by default; the protection of whistleblowers; the institutionalisation of control outcomes; and the secure design of control platforms. The conclusions substantiate a system of legislative measures for Ukraine, including a framework law on public control, harmonisation with Directives (EU) 2019/1024 and 2019/1937, classification of participation platforms as critical information infrastructure, and legal regulation of algorithmic risk indicators, framed as public investments with high expected returns during post-war recovery.