SETimes.comWorld Bank: fight against corruption slackens in majority of SEE countries
26/06/2008
The fight against corruption has weakened in most of the Southeast European countries, according to a new World Bank report on governance published on Tuesday.
(Dnevnik, Europe.bg, Hotnews.ro - 25/06/08; DPA, IPS, World Bank - 24/06/08)
Only five of the Southeast European (SEE) countries made progress in fighting corruption in 2007, the World Bank said in a new study released on Tuesday (June 24th). Kosovo and Bulgaria are among the other seven nations that deteriorated on this front, according to the Bank's annual World Governance Indicators (WGI) report.
The study covers 212 countries and territories, drawing on 35 different data sources. The Bank measures governance in the surveyed countries on the basis of six criteria: voice and accountability, political stability, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law and control of corruption. For each of these indicators, countries earn scores of 0 to 100 or percentile ranks.
With a rank of 25.6 for 2007, Kosovo appears to be the worst performer among the SEE nations in fighting corruption and the country with the most significant deterioration since 2006, when it received a score of 34. Bulgaria's performance in this category also worsened. Its 53.1 rank for last year was 3.7 points lower than the one it got in 2006, making it the worst performer in the fight against corruption among EU members.
Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and Greece's scores of 44.9 and 65.7, respectively, were both 3.2 points lower than those the previous year. Cyprus got 74.9 for 2007, down from 77.7 in 2006. Croatia (58.9) and Serbia (46.4) slipped 0.8 and 0.2 points, respectively.
Meanwhile, Albania (36.7) improved by 7.6 points. Romania (55.6) also made significant progress, gaining 7.1 points in a year. Macedonia (50.7), Montenegro (44.4) and Turkey (59.4) earned higher scores for 2007.
On the voice and accountability indicator, all SEE countries, except for BiH, Kosovo, Romania and Turkey, improved their scores.
Political stability deteriorated most in Turkey, Serbia and BiH. Cyprus (64.4), Greece (63.0) and Bulgaria (61.1) fared best on this indicator.
Cyprus (89.6), Croatia (70.0), Greece (69.7) and Turkey (63.5) were the countries in the region scoring best on government effectiveness.
All SEE nations improved their ranks for regulatory quality.
Except for BiH, Macedonia, Serbia and Turkey, all countries in the region also improved on or retained their rule-of-law scores from 2006.
"Despite governance gains in some countries, overall quality of governance around the world has not improved much over the past decade," a summary of the WGI report said.