Brussels, 01/12/2011 (Agence Europe) - Finland, Denmark and Sweden are top of the class of the EU in terms of corruption, according to the corruption perceptions index published on 1 December by the NGO Transparency International, which puts them at second place internationally (behind New Zealand). Bulgaria, on the other hand, which has applied to join the Schengen area along with Romania and is still under debate by the member states, comes last of all out of the club of 27. As for Greece and Italy, which have been hit by the debt crisis, they are also towards the bottom of the class, says the NGO, which argues that rampant corruption has indeed made the crisis worse.
The 2011 study of Transparency International, which looked at a total of 183 countries, is based on data collected from 17 international institutions, including the World Bank, the Asian and African development banks and the World Economic Forum, and issues an index between zero and ten, with ten being the level of corruption perceived as the highest. To carry out its study, the NGO also looked at the populations' attitudes towards embezzlement of public funds, bribery and governance and decision-making kept secret, it writes in a press release. The many demonstrations against austerity or economic difficulties have given it serious arguments. Because, in the view of the NGO, corruption clearly makes the debt crisis worse in the countries of the eurozone, particularly in Italy, which comes in 69th place (a score of 3.9 out of 10) and Greece, in 80th place, with 3.4 (Bulgaria comes 86th with 3.3). Poor scores can be directly explained by the “failure of the authorities to prevent the practice of bribery and tax evasion, key factors in this crisis”, said Transparency. Even so, the countries of the area seen as the most solid are not the best on this front, with Germany, for example, in 14th place, after the Netherlands or Luxembourg and France indicating 25th place in the classification, after Belgium and Ireland, in 19th place.
Other concerns of the NGO: the poor scores of most of the countries of the Arab Spring. Tunisia came in 73rd place (ahead of Greece), Egypt 112th place and Libya 168th. The NGO had already anticipated these results before the political upheaval, noting the deep rootedness of nepotism, bribery and clientelism “in everyday life”, it continues in a press release, and which can also be explained by a lack of awareness (or total ignorance) of “anti-corruption” concepts within administrations, the private sector and the population.
It is also worth noting in this index that Russia and Belarus, in 143rd place, did poorly, as did Ukraine in 152nd place. Somalia and North Korea brought up the rear in joint 182nd place. (SP/transl.fl)