Corruption remains a serious problem for citizens of the European Union, both in their daily lives and in their business activities. The level of corruption may vary from one EU country to another, but the phenomenon as such harms the community as a whole, as it drives away investment and affects public finances.
Transparency International, an international non-governmental organization, has published its latest Public Sector Corruption Perceptions Index for 2023.
Cyprus was ranked 49th out of 180 countries.
It should be noted that compared to 2022, the island state moved up two positions. Nevertheless, remaining among the countries where an alarming level of corruption is recorded. According to the compilers of the rating, this is a consequence of the inability to effectively investigate cases of corruption. Recall that in 2012, the Republic of Cyprus ranked 29th out of 174 possible countries. Since then, its results have steadily deteriorated.
The index for 2023 was compiled based on a survey of experts and businessmen from 180 countries. When ranking countries, a scale from zero to 100 was used, where 0 corresponds to an extremely high level of corruption and 100 to an extremely low level of corruption. By the way, Cyprus scored 53 in 2023.
Interestingly, Denmark (90 points) topped the index for the sixth consecutive year.
It is followed by Finland and New Zealand (87 and 85 points, respectively). The last positions in the index are occupied by Somalia (11 points), Venezuela (13 points), Syria (13 points), South Sudan (13 points) and Yemen (16 points). All of these countries are in protracted crisis, mostly in armed conflict. In turn, 23 countries, including several high-scoring democracies such as the UK (71 points), Iceland (72 points), the Netherlands (79 points) and Sweden (82 points), as well as several authoritarian states such as Venezuela (13 points), Iran (24 points), Russia (26 points) and Tajikistan (20 points), are at historic lows this year.
The rankings of twelve countries have dropped significantly since 2018. The list includes low- and middle-income countries such as El Salvador, Honduras (23 points), Liberia (25 points), Myanmar (20 points), Nicaragua (17 points), El Salvador (31 points), Sri Lanka (34 points) and Venezuela (13 points), as well as upper-middle- and high-income countries such as Austria (71 points), Argentina (37 points), the United Kingdom (71 points), Poland (54 points) and Turkey (34 points). Eight countries improved their rankings: Ireland (77 points), South Korea (63 points), Armenia (47 points), Vietnam (41 points), Maldives (39 points), Moldova (42 points), Angola (33 points) and Uzbekistan (33 points).
The global average score on the Corruption Perceptions Index in 2023 is 43 and remains unchanged for the twelfth consecutive year, with more than two-thirds of countries scoring below 50. This indicates that corruption remains a serious problem.