Spain stagnates fight versus corruption: the country has been maintaining its levels for a decade in the Index of Perception of Corruption, which collects the opinion of managers and experts.

Spain is worryingly stagnant in its fight against corruption. It does so, at least, in the Corruption Perception Index, a study prepared annually by the NGO Transparency International in which the opinion of managers and experts on the issue is taken.

Presented this Tuesday, this index gives Spain a score of 61 points out of one hundred in the index, with one hundred being the most desirable score.

The figure represents a setback of one point with respect to what was recorded in 2020 and 2019 and places the country in 34th place, far from the first thirty places and far from Denmark, Finland, and New Zealand, which lead the ranking with eighty-eight points.

However, above the point above or below, which may respond to small nuances of perception to some slight methodological change, what most concerns the author of the report is the lack of progress.

Spain stagnates fight versus corruption

With this, Spain has already been around sixty points for 10 years when, due to the size of its economy, it would normally be closer to seventy points, close to countries such as France, Japan, or Austria.

And it is not those countries don't get better. Although it is true that the stagnation is widespread, with just over twenty countries rising and more than twenty falling and 131 remaining where they were, precisely in southern Europe there are countries that are improving.

This is the case in Italy, a place that has traditionally scored poorly in terms of perceptions of corruption. This year, with fifty-six points, he is close to Spain. Portugal, on the other hand, achieved the surpass and overtook Spain by registering sixty-two points.

At European level, the best and the worst are happening in the north.

While the Scandinavian countries represent excellence, the geopolitical crisis that Russia and Ukraine have been dragging for years are noticeable in the area: the first goes to the 136th position of the ranking with just twenty-nine points and the second goes to 122 with thirty-two.

Countries affected by Spain stagnates fight versus corruption

Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria, close to the conflict zones, also remain in the vicinity of the forty points.

"We are among the 15 most important economies in the world, we cannot be in the 34th place of corruption," said Manuel Villoria, professor of Political Science and Administration at the Rey Juan Carlos University in Madrid and part of the Management Committee of Transparency International.

The study warns about the Spanish situation at a particularly sensitive moment in which, among many other things, we must give good destination to the billions of Europeans who are going to arrive in Spain within the framework of the Next Generation funds that the EU.

"This would be the fundamental thing, beyond Israel and Italy bringing us closer and Portugal passing us. We must follow our path, follow our framework of reforms. The idea is that corruption is the exception in the administrations", Villoria details.

With at least another year of the legislature ahead, experts believe that the government must now begin to adopt important anti-corruption measures to bring the country out of stagnation.

Interests and conflicts behind Spain stagnates fight versus corruption

For these, the path is to introduce conflict of interest assessment mechanisms and ethical codes that are complied with by the institutions, transpose the European directive on the protection of those who report corruption, approve a new transparency law, a new lobbying law and a new conflict of interest law, among many other measures.

In short, there is a lot of work ahead.

"But all this has to be put in place right. In Spain unfortunately we tend to make laws that are not fully complied with or that are so broad that they allow their non-compliance without anything happening, and we cannot continue like this," says Villoria.

In the rest of the world, issues such as the transparency of institutions are increasingly linked to human rights.

In that regard, the pandemic represented for many Governments an opportunity to get closer to the people and to return to the path of good governance. Judging by the results obtained by most countries in the index, this is certainly a wasted opportunity.

Instead of making efficient and effective management to fight the coronavirus, many senior officials have dedicated themselves to taking advantage of the lack of supply of materials and vaccines to do business and to put themselves and their friends at the top of the vaccination lists.

Pure and hard corruption, in other words.

This has been compounded by lifelong political corruption.

2012 history behind Spain stagnates fight versus corruption

In Spain, for example, in 2012 Sareb, the so-called "bad bank", issued debt worth more than 50,000 million euros to rescue the toxic real estate assets of the banks affected by the crisis.

Of that $ 50 billion, more than $ 30 billion still needs to be returned, according to Sareb & apos, s own website.

"The Sareb has to return many billions of euros to Europe because of the inadequate activity of the banks. Is it a policy catch? I do not know, but it is close. There has also been patronage in the Court of Auditors and the Constitutional Court, where some parties have agreed on certain appointments," Villoria recalled.

Of the twenty-three countries whose scores have fallen significantly since 2012, 19 have also lost points on civil liberties.

In addition, of the 331 reported cases of killings of human rights defenders in 2020, 98 per cent occurred in countries with scores below 45 points.

A paradigmatic example of this is the Philippines. With a score of 33, the country continues the fall that began in 2014, the year in which its president Rodrigo Duterte was elected and began to suppress freedom of association and expression while murdering opposition leaders.

Since its inception in 1995, the Corruption Perception Index has become one of the main indicators of corruption in the public sector.

It ranks 180 countries and territories around the world according to the perception of corruption in their public sector through data from thirteen external sources, including the World Bank, the World Economic Forum, private companies specializing in risk analysis, consulting firms and expert committees.

# Spain stagnates fight versus corruption #