Czech anti-corruption policy not trustworthy enough - TI watchdog

CN: Prague/New York - The anti-corruption policy of the Czech government needs to be more trustworthy and and it needs to be supported by more financial and human resources, the Czech branch of the Transparency International (TI) watchdog said today, referring to the fresh 2012 TI world report.

"No strategy can solve anything without people and money," said Radim Bures from the Czech TI branch.

The Czech Republic has slightly improved its position in the world ranking based on the corruption perceptions index (CPI), from the 57th to the 54th position among 180 countries, the 2012 report showed.

The TI reflects the Czech Republic´s deeply disintegrated state administration, bad functioning of political parties and the failure to meet the key priorities of the government´s anti-corruption policy, the Czech branch of TI said.

The Czech branch noted that it has been pointing to the lacking laws on civil servants, financing of political parties and on state attorney offices for a long time.

These laws have not been passed even though they are among the priorities of the anti-corruption strategy of the centre-right government of Petr Necas (Civic Democrats, ODS) that has been ruling the country since summer 2010.

The financing of state-run companies needs to be controlled more efficiently, too, TI says.

David Ondracka, head of Transparency International´s Czech branch, named further areas in which a lot of money is wasted in the Czech Republic: EU funds, overpriced IT orders, lacking regulation of the water industry and a bad management of the State Material Reserves.

The Czech Republic scored 49 points, out of the maximum number of 100, which is the same as Latvia, Turkey and Malaysia and slightly worse than Georgia, Rwanda and the Seychelles.

Apart from Slovakia, corruption rate is considered lower in the neighbouring countries - Germany has 79 points, Austria 69, Poland 58 and Hungary 55 points.

Slovakia has 46 points this year, sharing the 62nd position with Croatia.

In Europe, the Czech Republic is traditionally among the worst countries in the CPI ranking, with only Italy and the Balkan states being worse.

The best-doing countries with the lowest corruption rate are Denmark, Finland and New Zealand with 90 points, closely followed by Sweden, Singapore and Switzerland. On the bottom of the standings are Afghanistan, North Korea and Somalia.

Until last year, the scale from 0 to 10 points was used for CPI. This year the assessment started using a 100-point system.

The Czech corruption rate had worsened from 5.37 points in 1996 to 3.7 points in 2002, then it started improving and reached 5.2 points in 2007 and 2008. In the past three years the CPI was falling again and it was 4.9 points in 2009, 4.6 points in 2010 and 4.4 points in 2011.