Bosnia, Serbia, Turkey, Hungary Corruption Worsening, Transparency Says

Romanian citizens demonstrating against the changes of the justice, Bucharest, 22 February 2019. Photo: EPA-EFE/ROBERT GHEMENT

Turkey, Hungary, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia got their worst corruption scores in ten years in the latest Global Perceptions Corruption Index, CPI, which the watchdog organisation Transparency International published on Tuesday.

Lidija Prokic, TI Regional Coordinator for Eastern and South East Europe, said the average CPI score for the Western Balkans was 38, which is less than the global average of 43 and far less than the EU average of 66.

“We see that mechanisms to control corruption in Western Balkan and Turkey still have a long way to go in terms of improvement,” Prokic told BIRN.

Bosnia and Herzegovina, ranked in 110th place (scoring 34 points) out of 180 countries, was the worst-ranked Western Balkan country. Prokic said that there are “a number of alarming issues” in Bosnia, including a lack of judicial independence besides a number of problems noted during the 2022 elections.

“We saw that, for example, business entities that are donating to parties competing in elections are also the business entities getting tenders and jobs and opportunities from those very institutions that these parties are then elected to,” she said.

Next worst in the region are Serbia and Albania, ranked in 101st place with 36 points, together with Turkey. Serbia’s historic low score was attributed mainly “to continued weakening of the rule of law and growing autocracy”. Last year, Serbia was ranked 96th with 38 points. Its highest-ever score, of 42, was in 2013, and it never scored less than 38 until this report.

“One thing that is also very characteristic of Serbia is that we see an enormous number of CEOs in state-owned enterprises who are kept in their acting mandates for extended periods of time,” Prokic said.

“Considering the amount of public funds that these state-owned enterprises have, and the decisive role of CEOs in how these funds are used, that really raises serious concerns and is a serious risk of corruption,” she added.

The Berlin-based watchdog divides all countries into six geographical groups: Americas, Western Europe and the EU, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Middle East and North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia Pacific. It then measures perceived levels of corruption in each state and awards points from 0 to 100. A score of 100 points means a “very clean” perception, while 0 means “highly corrupted”.

Albania’s place has remained largely unchanged on the CPI.

“This hybrid regime’s progress in areas like judicial vetting and strengthening of the Specialised Structure for Anti-Corruption and Organised Crime has been overshadowed by weakened media independence and a lack of opportunities for meaningful engagement in decision-making by civil society,” the report noted.

Source:Transparency International 

Turkey, according to TI, “needs to address weakening effectiveness in political checks and balances and a stronger legal and institutional anticorruption framework needs to be put in place in order to eliminate undue influence in prosecution of corruption”.

Moldova is ranked in 91st place (39), North Macedonia in 85th place (40) and Kosovo 84th (41). All three countries scored better than they did last year.

Kosovo, the report said, “has made progress with an improved legal framework for political and election campaign finance, but implementation of such reforms will be key in the coming months”, and “the government still needs to improve transparency and refrain from any interference in the justice system”.

In North Macedonia, “officials are opening new corruption cases, but these steps in the right direction are jeopardised by inefficient follow-up with ongoing ones and lack of integrity in selection of key figures in the judiciary”.

Moldova “has recently emerged from a turbulent political period and shown a real willingness to implement anti-corruption reforms,” the report said.

Montenegro ranked highest in the Western Balkans in 65th place (45) but “has been stagnating on the CPI for the past five years”, the report cautioned.

“The new government hasn’t met expectations for improved institutional and legal frameworks for the fight against corruption and continues the practice of withholding information from the public,” the report said.

When it comes to former Yugoslav republics that are now in the European Union, Croatia was ranked in 50th place (57) and Slovenia in 41st (56).

Another other EU member from the Balkans, Greece, was ranked 51st (52). It has improved in the last 10 years but, according to the report, “progress is threatened by serious concerns over the roll-back of the rule of law, the independence of the national transparency authority, and weak guarantees for the protection and safety of journalists”.

Elsewhere in the Balkans, Bulgaria was ranked 72nd (43) and Romania 63rd (46) – the “worst performers” in the Western Europe and EU region.

Source: Transparency International

In Bulgaria, TI said, “vested corporate interests have established strong oligarchic influence”.

“Political corruption has prevented free and fair parliamentary elections, while the latest round of legislative amendments pushed through at the end of 2022 further increase the likelihood of electoral manipulation.

“Considering the likelihood of Bulgaria seeing yet another general election in 2023, changing the electoral code without wide consensus and in this timeframe goes against best practices,” it added.

In Central Europe, Hungary ranked 77th (42) On Hungary, the report says, “evidence is mounting against political elites on their misuse of both state and EU funds”, citing recent EU decisions to suspend or condition the country’s access to EU funds with reforms.

“The success of this belated but promising conditionality mechanism depends on the EU’s willingness to compel Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government to introduce meaningful reforms so that rule of law can be reinstated,” the report said.

“With notable gaps in new rules on conflicts of interest and asset disclosure, it is uncertain how effective these will be in a country where checks and balances have been meticulously dismantled,” it added.

Czechia, ranked in 41st place (56) and Slovakia in 49th (53), both scored better than the last year. However, Poland, ranked in 45th place with 55 points, got its lowest score in 10 years.

The top countries on the list were the same as in 2022: Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland and the Netherlands. The bottom five were Yemen, Venezuela, South Sudan, Syria, and Somalia.