Transparency International has ranked Serbia 104 out of 180 countries on its Corruption Perception Index (CPI) for 2023, a drop of three places from the 2022 CPI.
Serbia also got a ranking of 36 out of 100 on the CPI scale where 0 means highly corrupt and 100 means there is no corruption. It scored a similar number of points as the other countries of the region.
Transparency International said that “Serbia is witnessing a democratic decline, with its autocratic government using special laws to limit transparency in large-scale projects”.
It recalled that a recently introduced law opened up at least one billion euros of public funds, earmarked for Expo 2027, to the risk of inflated contract prices and poor-quality construction work.
“The prosecution service has also neglected to act on publicly presented evidence that election fraud benefited the incumbent Serbian Progressive Party and its allies in December 2023. This politically captured justice institution is failing to protect the public interest at a crucial time, reducing the country’s ability to stop corruption,” Transparency International said.
Source: N1
