Monitoring corruption and anti-corruption in Southeast Europe: Policy challenges and the role of civil society

On Nov. 13-14 2014, the Southeast Leadership for Development and Integrity (SELDI) initiative presented its flagship Regional Anti-Corruption Report, Anti-corruption Reloaded, at a regional anti-corruption and good governance policy conference in Tirana, Albania. The Albanian Center for Economic Research (ACER) and House of Europe (Shtepia e Europes) organized the event in cooperation with the Regional Cooperation Council, the Regional Anti-corruption Initiative, and the Government of Albania. The conference focused on corruption and anti-corruption policy challenges in Southeast Europe 2014- 2020, the findings of the Regional Anti- Corruption Report and the National Corruption Assessment Reports for nine countries in Southeast Europe, as well as on specific ideas for countering corruption on a regional scale such as corruption proofing of legislation, monitoring and assessing corruption risks, etc.
The Regional Anti-corruption Report underlines that despite some important achievements – mostly with respect to the stabilisation of democratic institutions, the adoption of laws in key anticorruption areas, a reduction in petty bribery and growing public intolerance of corruption in the region – anticorruption and good governance reforms are not consolidated, corruption among elected politicians and judges seems to be increasing and the enforcement of anticorruption legislation is haphazard. The experience with corruption (in other words, the involvement of members of the public in corruption transactions) in SEE is very high. Even in Turkey and Croatia, where levels of administrative corruption are lowest in the region, about 8-9% of the population reports having given a bribe in the last year. Such levels of experience with corruption are well beyond the average levels registered by the Eurobarometer surveys in the EU. This shows that administrative corruption is a mass phenomenon in SEE countries, and cannot be confined to single cases of corrupt officials.
Corruption pressure from officials is the main factor that influences the level of corruption involvement. Most of the countries where both involvement and pressure are high are also characterised by low resilience to corruption pressure (most of the respondents who were asked for a bribe gave one). Although resilience could not be considered the main factor to reduce involvement in corruption, it reflects the prevailing social attitudes to integrity and is largely a result of the efforts of civil society and the authorities in increasing anticorruption awareness. In this respect the role of civil society is crucial as it is in a position to lead the public pressure for change.
As regards policy priorities, there have been two significant changes in the approach to anticorruption – a shift of attention from petty (that of traffic police or public sector doctors) to grand corruption (that of members of parliament or ministers) and criminalisation of a wider array of abuses of public office. Achieving impact in terms of punishing grand corruption though remains limited at best. The key challenge for anticorruption policies in the region is to close the implementation gap, and keep up with the shifting manifestations and forms of corruption while maintaining regulatory stability and avoiding overwhelming the judiciary with frequent changes.
The findings of SELDI monitoring emphasise the significance of public support for the success of anticorruption policies. Trust by the public in government and the effectiveness of policy are joined in a kind of virtuous circle: higher shares of people who are optimistic about the feasibility of anticorruption success are correlated with lower corruption levels. Conversely, more prevalent corruption goes hand in hand with increased pessimism about the prospects of anticorruption.
Overall, the SELDI countries have adopted the better part – more importantly the logic and approach – of international anticorruption standards in their national legislations. Statutory quality, however, continues to be a problem. Frequent and inconsistent changes to laws have resulted in procedural and statutory complexity and contradictory interpretation by courts. A shortcoming that is common to all SELDI countries is the compromised autonomy of the various oversight and law enforcement bodies. Some degree of interference by elected politicians – members of parliament or government ministers – in the work of the civil service is typical. Further, none of the SELDI countries has an adequately functioning complaints management mechanism in the public administration. Most have instituted an anticorruption body that is expected to receive complaints from the public. Another deficiency that is shared is the shortage of reliable and publicly accessible data on the performance of government institutions, especially as relates to anticorruption. Information and statistics are either not collected, not available to the public, or gathered so haphazardly as not to allow monitoring and analysis. One of the key issues related to the design of specialised national anticorruption institutions in the region is how to combine preventive and repressive functions. As regards the legislature, parliaments in the region do not rank high in the public trust and this unenviable position is not without its reasons. Codes of ethical behaviour are rare and unenforced; lobbying regulation is even rarer; only recently have procedures for lifting immunity from prosecution started to be introduced, albeit timidly; wherever there is an anticorruption body in parliament, it is typically to supervise some executive agency, rather than deal with corruption among members. An issue of significant concern in the SELDI countries is the financing of political parties and electoral campaigns.
Key recommendations for the SEE region
The experience of SELDI countries in tackling corruption since 2001 demonstrates that solving the corruption challenge in the region would require sustained efforts on many fronts and the involvement of all local and international stakeholders over the long term. The regional report provides a number of recommendations, among which three key areas need to be prioritised by countries in the region and at the European level in order to achieve breakthrough in the mid-term:
ՠEffective prosecution of corrupt high-level politicians and senior civil servants is the only way to send a strong and immediate message that corruption would not be tolerated.
ՠAn independent corruption and anti-corruption monitoring mechanism needs to be introduced on national and regional level in order to provide robust data and analysis and integrate both corruption diagnostics and anticorruption policy evaluation. The mechanism should be implemented through national and/or regional civil society organisations and networks, and should be independent of direct national government funding. In this respect international partners, and primarily the European Commission, should engage directly civil society organisations in the region, which is already happening.
ՠCritical sectors with high corruption and state-capture risks, such as the energy sector, should be addressed with priority. The other priority measures include: increasing competition in public procurement; improving the corporate governance of state owned enterprises; transparent management of large-scale investment projects; enhancing the accountability and independence of energy regulatory authorities.
During the conference the Albanian Center for Economic Research made a presentation on the main results from the Albanian National Corruption Assessment Report. In June 2013 Albania held general national elections, which led to a change of the political party in power. A National Coordinator for Anti- Corruption (NCAC) was appointed in November 2013, to coordinate anti-corruption activities of state institutions and bodies and independent institutions at central and local level. A network of focal points in all line ministries and independent institutions was established. The new Anti-Corruption Strategy (2014- 2020) was prepared with the technical assistance of the OSCE presence in Albania, and is much shorter and more focused than the previous strategy, with precise and clear objectives. During the last three years in Albania, there have been a number of general developments with relevance to anticorruption, including:
ՠIn March 2014, amendments to the Code of Criminal Procedure implementing the 2012 constitutional changes on restrictions to the immunities enjoyed by judges, MPs and other senior officials were approved;
ՠIn March 2014 the draft law with amendments to the Law for the Prevention and Fight Against Organized Crime or better known as “Anti-Mafia” law was approved, featuring inclusion of the term “corruption” within the scope of this Law;
ՠIn September 2014, a new body called Investigation Section for Corruption and Property was created to investigate the cases of corruption of judges, prosecutors and senior officials.
Despite the legislative developments, Albania ranks the worst in South East Europe regarding the percentage of population aged 18 and above who have been asked to give and have given a bribe (money, favour, gift) in the last year (Figure 1). Thus Albania displays the highest percentage of both, reported corruption pressure and involvement in bribery, with 45.3 and 38.9 percent respectively. However, there has been an improvement in Albania’s scores compared to a decade ago. The citizens of Albania have become more sensitive about corruption as they are among the few in the region that have ranked corruption as the most significant challenge for the country – 66% think that corruption is the most pressing challenge in Albania today. This provides an important window of opportunity for the Albanian authorities to use this heightened pressure and interest on the side of the public to act bolder in tackling corruption concerns.
The Corruption Assessment Report of Albania, prepared by ACER within the SELDI, identifies the main shortcomings of the legislative and institutional framework regarding anticorruption and provides the following recommendations:
ՠAlbania needs to pay particular attention to the proper implementation of the public administration reform;
ՠThe prevention and repression capacity and independence of law enforcement institutions need to be enhanced;
ՠMeasures need to be taken to ensure transparency in the appointment and evaluation of the judges, based on merit-based criteria;
ՠThe role and independence of the High Council of Justice needs to be strengthened as the Council is responsible for ensuring the integrity of Albania’s judiciary by monitoring and evaluating it;
ՠThe disciplinary system for magistrates needs to be substantially improved, including through a more transparent and efficient inspection system;
ՠRegarding the political parties financing, the Central Election Commission needs to launch inspections, going beyond a purely formal approach towards checking the statements of political parties, and establish internally clear responsibilities for oversight of party finances.
The Regional Anti-Corruption Report can be downloaded in full from SELDI’s web-site at www.seldi.net. The National Corruption Assessment report for Albania, which presents the survey results in detail along with information on the legislative and institutional framework of anticorruption and policy recommendations, can be downloaded from ACER’s website at www.acer.org.al.
SELDI is the biggest anti-corruption and good governance civil society network in South-East Europe. At its inception it gathered 17 partners from 9 countries in South East Europe. SELDI works to strengthen civil society participation in finding innovative public-private partnership solutions to governance and corruption challenges in the region. For further information, please visit SELDI.net