After getting a hammering from the EU over its invest citizenship scheme, there was good news for Cyprus as it moved up Transparency International’s corruption index.
Cyprus moved up four places in the 2018 index to 38th place with a two-point improvement on the previous year.
Cyprus scored 59 from 100 points from 57 points in 2017 to put it on level terms with the Czech Republic and Lithuania but below Slovenia and Poland.
Despite the improvement, Cyprus’ score is still below the average for the EU/Western Europe region which a high of 66 and adrift from its 66 score in 2012.
The 2018 Corruption Perceptions Index, published by Transparency International, measures the perceived levels of public sector corruption in 180 countries and territories. Drawing on 13 surveys of businesspeople and expert assessments, the index scores on a scale of zero (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean).
The results paint a sadly familiar picture: more than two-thirds of countries score below 50, while the average score is just 43.
“Perhaps most disturbing is that the vast majority of countries assessed have made little to no progress. Only 20 have made significant progress in recent years,” said Transparency International.
It said, as long as corruption continues to go largely unchecked, democracy is under threat around the world.
“Corruption chips away at democracy to produce a vicious cycle, where corruption undermines democratic institutions and, in turn, weak institutions are less able to control corruption,” said Patricia Moreira, managing director of Transparency International.
“With many democratic institutions under threat across the globe – often by leaders with authoritarian or populist tendencies – we need to do more to strengthen checks and balances and protect citizens’ rights.”
Recent anti-corruption protests from Mongolia to Romania to Guatemala have made clear the public’s outrage with politicians’ abuse of office and attempts to limit their own accountability.
Voters’ frustration with corruption has also reshaped the politics of several countries in the past few years.
The leaders riding waves of discontent to positions of power must pay more than lip-service to anti-corruption; it should enter the DNA of their policies and reforms.
“Our research makes a clear link between having a healthy democracy and successfully fighting public sector corruption,” said Delia Ferreira Rubio, chair of Transparency International.
“Corruption is much more likely to flourish where democratic foundations are weak and, as we have seen in many countries, where undemocratic and populist politicians capture democratic institutions and use them to their advantage.”
At the bottom of the Europe region, Bulgaria scores 42, dropping one point since last year. Bulgaria is followed by Greece (45), which dropped three points since 2017, and Hungary (46), which dropped eight points over the last five years.
With an average regional score of 66 out of 100, Western Europe and the EU are doing far better than other parts of the globe.
“However, for a region that prides itself on some of the most robust integrity systems in the world, the patchwork of partially overlapping national and EU-level integrity systems presents its own problems and still has a long way to go to tackle corruption effectively,” said Transparency.
This year, with stagnating scores throughout the region and most countries only moving one or two points since last year, the United Kingdom (UK) stands out for having improved over time.
Although the UK dropped two points since 2017, it has improved six points since 2012, moving from 74 to 80.
However, despite being an overall improver on the CPI, 2018 marks the first time that the UK declined on the index since 2012, receiving its lowest score since 2016.
Over the past year, the UK experienced a few public sector scandals involving Members of Parliament who were found guilty of taking undeclared holidays paid for by foreign states.
In addition, questions over the origin of money used in the EU referendum combined with concerns over the future of Brexit, make future movement of the UK on the CPI unclear, said Transparency.
Denmark was top of the CPI with a score of 88 while Somalia was rock-bottom with a miserable 10.
