Corruption continues to grow in Hungary, Orbán helpless

According to index.hu, Hungary has moved down on the corruption list of Transparency International (TI) last year. that means that Hungary is one of the most corrupt countries in the region and Europe as well – Transparency Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) shows.

The index shows the opinion of businessmen and professionals about how corrupt the public sphere of the country is. 100 points means the functioning of the state is clear and transparent, while 0 point shows the total opposite.

Last year, Hungary reached 51 points which means the country is the 50^th most corrupt of the examined 168.

Hungary has moved down 3 places compared to 2014. In comparison: only 4 countries in the EU and two in the region – Romania and Bulgaria – performed worse, index.hu told.

If you take a look at our region you can see that Hungary reached 55 points in Central-Eastern Europe in 2012 and belonged to the less corrupt states. Since then Croatia and Slovakia caught up to Hungary, while the Czech Republic and Latvia outran the country.

József Péter Martin, Managing Director of Transparency International Hungary explained the given situation by the centralized form of corruption that has been built up and made systematic. Even pro-government intellectuals admit this, for example, political scientist András Lánczi, who said that the very thing the press calls corruption is strictly speaking the “main policy of Fidesz”. TI cited the construction companies prospering from public procurements (Market, Duna Aszfalt and the companies of Lőrinc Mészáros), the HUF 200 billion tax subsidies granted to sport clubs and the difficulties to learn the data of public expenditures as examples.

According to index.hu, two-thirds of the 168 countries studied reached less than 50 points, so the situation is not good globally. One of the biggest losers is Brazil which moved down 7 places compared to the 2014 results. Turkey dropped 11 places from 2013 to 2014, and now it lost another 2 places. The least corrupt countries are Denmark (91 points), Finland (90) and Sweden (89), while the worst rankings are occupied by South Sudan, Afghanistan, Sudan, North Korea and Somalia, each of them with 8-8 points.

Copy editor: bm

Source: http://index.hu