Balkans score badly on graft scale, according to new report

Transparency International hails anti-corruption efforts in Albania; points to Bosnia falling behind

Bosnia is to hold local elections on October 5.

BERLIN (AFP) – Balkan states are struggling to reduce corruption to achieve the standards needed to join the European Union, said a report by corruption watchdog Transparency International (TI) released yesterday.

“Despite extensive reforms and external incentives in the framework of the European Union pre-accession process, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina are not perceived as having significantly improved their anti-corruption stance,” the report said.

Croatia and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) are already EU candidates, while Montenegro, Serbia and Bosnia hope to attain the status soon, having only signed a Stabilization and Association Agreement, considered the first step toward membership.

All Balkan countries registered scores of below five on a scale of one to 10 on TI’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), “indicating that most face serious perceived levels of domestic corruption.”

Croatia, which hopes to join the EU the soonest, in 2010, obtained a score of 4.4 this year in comparison with 4.1 in 2007.

Similar progress was made in FYROM with a score of 3.6 this year compared with to 3.3 the year before. But Bosnia lost ground, achieving a score of 3.2 compared to 3.3 in 2007, the report said.

The most positive result achieved in the Balkan region was by Albania, improving on last year’s 2.9 with this year’s 3.4, said the watchdog.

“An official task force created to fight corruption and economic crime has increased the number of officials prosecuted and sentenced for corruption, also building confidence among the public that corruption can be punished in Albania,” the report said.

Last year, out of 224 officials suspected of corruption and abuse of power, as many as 53 had been arrested and prosecuted, the watchdog said.

But the fight against corruption in Bulgaria, though a EU member since 2007, was in decline, with a 3.6 score this year, down from 4.1 last year.

“The country is still wary of tackling political corruption, which is closely linked to a very high level of organized crime,” the report said.

Corruption there in the past two years, particularly in the judiciary and the misuse of EU funds, had “heavily damaged its international image and reduced trust in national institutions.”

The European Commission confirmed in July that it had frozen some 800 million euros of European funds intended for Bulgaria due to its insufficient efforts in fighting “corruption at high levels and organized crime.”

In other parts of the region, the report gave Turkey the highest ranking with a score of 4.6, up from 4.1 in 2007. This came despite political inaction in Turkey during the past two years, largely because of a shift in public discourse about the problem of corruption, said the report.

SARAJEVO (AFP) – More than 70 percent of Bosnians consider their political parties the most corrupt part of their society, a survey conducted ahead of local elections next month revealed yesterday.

Only the police force was considered to be more corrupt, with 70.8 percent compared with 70.4 percent for political parties, according to the survey by global watchdog Transparency International.

The poll found 78 percent of the 1,603 respondents believed there was little or no chance of corruption being reduced in the next four years, while one in four citizens believed that no political party would fight against it.

Participants identified high unemployment and poverty as the country’s leading problems, followed by corruption and crime.

Thirty-eight percent said none of the political parties had a vision for the country’s economic development.