STA, 25 January 2022 - Slovenia placed 41st among 180 countries in the 2021 Corruption Perception Index (CPI) in its poorest showing since 2013 to lag even further behind the average for EU and OECD countries.
Compared to last year, Slovenia slid six spots and lost three points to score 57, which compares to the EU average of 64 and the OECD average of 67 points, follows from the CPI report, released by Transparency International (TI) on Tuesday.
TI Slovenia believes such a result is the product of "the efforts to prevent corruption being pushed to the political margins", years of failure to implement sweeping reform and some bad practices in recent years.
"After years of stagnation, recurring scandals, pressure on the media, civil society and independent institutions it has expectedly come to this decline, which is cause for concern. In the super-election year, we need clear commitments from political players to stop the decline and reverse the trend," commented Samo Bardutzky, the interim head of TI Slovenia.
He believes one of the first tests will be putting in place legal protection of whistleblowers. TI Slovenia believes the bill presented in December is faulty, urging more inclusive dialogue to improve it and calling on political players to commit to adopting a comprehensive protection for whistleblowers.
Bardutzky warned that decisions taken during the Covid-19 epidemic "broadly encroached on fundamental human rights that are important for control of government", something that has been detected by the international Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance in its latest (IDEA) report.
In releasing the latest index Transparency International noted a lack of progress in most countries and historically low scores posted by 27 countries, observing the curtailing of fundamental rights and a decline in democratic standards across the globe.
Two out of three countries in the index scored less than 50 points with the average score at 43. Apart from Slovenia, 26 other countries recorded their lowest score in a decade.
The index is topped by New Zealand, Finland and Denmark, which all scored 88, ahead of Singapore, Sweden and Norway, which scored 85 points.
The lowest scoring Slovenian neighbour is Hungary, which ranks 73rd with 43 points. Croatia ranks 63rd with 47 points and Italy 42nd with 56 points. Austria is 13th with 74 points.
The index measures the perception of corruption in the public sector, with 0 points indicating a high level of corruption perception and 100 points a very low level of perceived corruption.
It collates data and analyses from international institutions that measure perception of corruption through the eyes of business representatives, analysts and experts. This year's index relies on independent sources, TI Slovenia said, adding that data had been collected in the past 24 months.
