Belarusians are worried by corruption four times less than Europeans

The European Commission presented a series of suggestions for struggle against corruption at the level of the whole European Union on June 6.

"It is obvious that corruption remains a serious problem of our societies. 4 EU citizens out of 5 call it the biggest problem in their country. Corruption is a serious political, social and economic challenge to our societies", - European Commissioner for Home Affairs Cecilia Malmström started the presentation of the new initiative.

4 EU citizens out of 5 call corruption the biggest problem in their country.
For Belarusians, corruption problem is not a priority. According to the data provided by the informational-analytical center of the President's Administration, only  21,4% of the country's inhabitants are worried by corruption.

The economic damage from corruption is quite impressive at the whole territory of the European Union - more than 120 billion euros, which surpasses the EU's budget and makes 1/100 of EU's gross domestic product, the European Commissioner informed.

There is no exact estimation of damage caused by corruption in the whole Belarus. However, the recent information from the General Public Prosecutor's office confirms that the losses are getting bigger and bigger. Thus, the damage caused by corrupted Belarusian officials amounted to 17.9 billion roubles for the first 4 months of the year 2011, which is 70% more than for the same time period in 2010.

Starting from 2013, the European Commission will prepare a special anti-corruption report every two years. European officials are also planning to improve cooperation with other anti-corruption organizations and initiatives, for example, with the Group of States against corruption (GRECO).

The experts will define shortcomings in the anti-corruption struggle in all the 27 EU countries through a special monitoring. Alongside with that, they are not going to compose a special rating of the countries, Cecilia Malmström clarified.

Besides, a similar corruption perceptions rating has been composed by the special international organization "Transparency International" for a long time already. In this rating, Belarus shares place No. 127 with Syria, Lebanon, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Uganda and Eastern Timor.

"Transparency is corruption's worst enemy. Although Europe is more transparent and open than many other countries and regions of the world, no EU country is totally free from corruption", - the European Commissioner has said.

True. However, the most corrupted EU country, according to this rating - Greece - looks much better than Belarus, being at the 78th place. On the whole, according to the evaluation made by the experts of "Transparency International", only Russia and Ukraine are worse than Belarus at the European continent.

The least corrupted European countries are the northern ones: Denmark shares the 1st place of the world with Singapore and New Zealand, then go Sweden and Finland.

Corruption Perceptions Index- 2010