TIRANA, Jan. 29 – Albania led Balkan countries in Transparency International’s latest report on perceived levels of public-sector corruption, which described the perception for the region as “highly corrupt” with below-average scores.
Albania’s worst score, which has dropped eight places from last year’s report, was followed by Kosovo and Macedonia.
This score now makes Albania the 99th most corrupt country in the world.
“It is particularly worrying that across the region we see governments’ interventions that are weakening the system of checks and balances, essential for successful anti-corruption efforts and functional democracy,” Transparency International spokesperson for the Balkans, Lidija Prokic, told regional media.
“Instead, civic and political rights are being limited and holding governments to the account is becoming increasingly difficult.”
Although some countries, such as Argentina, Estonia and Senegal, have been the exceptions to this rule with increased scores, the general scores have revealed a downward trend for most countries to lower corruption, thus directly threatening democracy around the globe.
The countries’ score, ranging from 0, perceived as highly corrupt to 100, perceived to be the least corrupt, use experts’ assessments and opinion surveys – Albania’s score of 36 was only closely worse than both Kosovo’s and Macedonia’s score of 37.
Concerning Albania’s drop, Prokic said its score raises concern about the country’s further progress, but added that with the ongoing vetting of judges in the country and anti-corruption institutional framework almost complete, it remains to be seen if its institutions will deliver on expectations in the coming year.
For Kosovo, which has also dropped two points since 2017, the main issues were threats to journalists investigating corruption, a need for transparency in party financing and lack of accountability of public officials.
Nonetheless, none of these scores are a big surprise for the region which, in its long quest for European integration and long-lasting peace and stability, has been continuously criticized over a lack of a proper mechanism to counter corruption in almost all areas of everyday life, from high scale to corruption to low scale corruption.
Only recently, Albania was named a “hybrid regime” between autocracy and democracy from the latest Freedom House report, while the current Socialist government has faced mounting allegations over the last months concerning corrupt government tenders that allocate big amounts of money to offshore companies run by Albanian business oligarchs.
Additionally, a number of international media freedom watchdogs have recently called on Socialist Prime Minister Edi Rama to withdraw a bill that proposes to monitor online news portals as a direct threat to the freedom of media and a fast pathway to partial autocracy.
The non-EU Balkan state with the lowest perceived level of corruption is Montenegro, with a score of 45. Although it still dropped one point since last year.
Among the EU members in the Balkans, the worst-ranked country is Bulgaria, with a score of 42, followed by Romania, at 47 and Croatia, at 48.
Globally, the states with the least perceived corruption are Denmark, with 88 points, and New Zealand, with 87.
