TS: Serbia among highly corrupt countries

TS: Serbia among highly corrupt countries

Last year, Serbia's score of 42 in the index prepared by the NGO that monitors and publicizes corporate and political corruption in international development put in 72nd place among 177 countries.

Transparency Serbia chair Vladimir Goati told journalists that unfortunately, Serbia was still below the world average, despite the fact that it had invested a lot of energy and had set up new bodies and agencies.

The anti-corruption measures are unconvincing, he said, adding that corruption had been rife in political parties for years.

“The fight against corruption is not a question of a single arrest but a systemic trench battle that should not be stopped even for a single moment,” Goati said.

Transparency Serbia Program Director Nemanja Nenadic agrees that additional efforts are necessary and points out that concentrated political power opens space for deeper reforms and institution building.

“It is clear that efforts to combat corruption must be convincing and that plenty of work is ahead of us,” said Nenadic, who had previously stated that according to announcements, we should expect in 2015 helpful reforms to move us towards improving public administration, labor inspection, and systems for issuance of building permits.

Nenadic pointed out that laws in Serbia were not really implemented to a sufficient extent and that the implementation of the Law on Whistleblower Protection would be a great test.

Transparency Serbia officials pointed out that Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania and Bulgaria were all ahead of Serbia in the CPI, while Bosnia-Herzegovina, with which we shared the 72nd place in 2013, was now ranked two places lower than Serbia.

TS Executive Director Bojana Medenica said that Serbia’s neighbors, EU members Bulgaria and Romania, were still perceived as highly corrupt countries, which showed that to stamp out corruption, a country had to really face its problems, as just being a member of the EU was not enough.

The Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index ranks countries on a scale from 100 to 0, where a score of 100 would mean that the country is almost fully rid of corruption.