Bulgaria slips in corruption ranking, says watchdog

24/09/2008

Bulgaria is perceived as the most corrupt country among 31 EU and Western European nations, according to Transparency International.

(Transparency International, Euobserver, Sofia Echo, SNA, Dnevnik, Mediapool, AFP, Bloomberg, Reuters, AP - 23/09/08)

Bulgaria scored 3.6 on the Corruption Perceptions Index. [TI]

There is no corruption-free zone in and around the EU, Transparency International (TI) said in a report Tuesday (September 23rd), singling out Bulgaria as the 27-nation bloc's most corrupt member state. EU membership did not provide an automatic remedy for corruption in Bulgaria, the Berlin-based watchdog group said in its annual Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), citing a significant decline in the country's marks.

With a score of only 3.6 points on a scale of zero to 10, down from 4.1 last year, Bulgaria ranked last among 31 EU and Western European countries, behind Romania with 3.8 points. In the global rankings of 180 countries, Bulgaria slipped to 72nd from 64th in last year's survey.

"Despite its accession to the EU, the country is still wary of tackling political corruption, which is closely linked to a very high level of organised crime," TI said. "During the past two years, corruption in public procurement and strategic concession deals, a judiciary paralysed by corrupt structures and the misuse of EU funds dedicated to the country's development … have countered Bulgaria's success, heavily damaged its international image and reduced trust in national institutions."

Nearly two years after joining the EU in January 2007, Bulgaria and Romania continue to be closely watched by Brussels for their progress in judicial reforms and the fight against corruption. The European Commission (EC) has also expressed concern about Sofia's failure to deal with organised crime in the country.

Citing fraud and irregularities in the handling of EU funds, the EC froze about 500m euros of European assistance to the Balkan nation in July.

Bulgaria and Romania's marks speak for themselves and will be taken into account when the EC prepares its next monitoring reports on the two countries, to be published in 2009, Euobserver quoted Commission spokesman Mark Gray as saying at a press conference Tuesday.

Bulgaria shares its 72nd place in this year's CPI with seven other countries -- China, Macedonia, Mexico, Peru, Suriname, Swaziland, and Trinidad and Tobago. It ranks lower than Romania and the rest of the EU member states, as well as Turkey (58th) and Croatia (62nd), which have not completed their accession negotiations with Brussels.

With scores of 9.3 each -- the highest in this year's global rankings -- Denmark, New Zealand and Sweden appear to be the countries with the lowest levels of corruption in the world. At the bottom of the scale is Somalia, with a score of 1.0 for the second year in a row.

The new CPI indicates Bulgaria is no longer a country that has problems with corruption, but is a highly corrupt country, according to Dimitar Kyumyurdzhiev, deputy chairman of TI's Bulgaria chapter.

"The fact that Bulgaria, which is an EU member, is lower ranked than its neighbours that are not part of the EU is unacceptable," he told reporters Tuesday, calling for a new strategy against corruption and zero tolerance of such practices.

In early August, the cabinet adopted a 200-page action plan, detailing specific measures the country will take by the end of this year to address the problems and shortcomings that led to that suspension of EU assistance about two weeks earlier. Measures include adoption of a conflict of interest law, amendments to the public procurement law, introduction of anti-corruption procedures in the health sector, an amended penalty code and a unified code of ethics for magistrates.

The release of TI's 2008 CPI coincided with two dramatic incidents in Bulgaria. On Tuesday, the deputy chairman of the State Agency for Sport and Youth, Ivan Lekov, was arrested in connection with a football match-fixing scandal.

The day before, masked men beat up the editor of a Bulgarian-language news website, frognews.bg. Ognyan Stefanov, who investigates corruption, is fighting for his life in hospital with spine injuries and three broken limbs.