TI BiH’s message to the European Commission: The state of corruption in BiH is dramatic

Representatives of Transparency International (TI) and European Commission met in Brussels on the regular annual consultations that are organized for the purpose of preparing the European Commission’s Progress Report that is published every year.

During the consultations it was discussed about the progress that Bosnia and Herzegovina achieved in the past year in anti-corruption field, and all the findings so far suggest that the level of progress in this field is insignificant. Transparency international Bosnia and Herzegovina (TI BiH), by monitoring the work of BiH institutions in implementing the anti-corruption reforms, has come to results that show that BiH has not undertaken any concrete anti-corruption activities, which was also proved by this year’s Corruption Perceptions Index by which BiH deteriorated and became the lowest ranking country in the region.

Analyses show that the greatest problems BiH has to deal with on the way to the progress towards European Union are political corruption, public officials being closely connected to the organized crime, as well as illegal privatization processes and non-transparent work of public companies. Additionally, incompatibility of laws regulating conflict of interests, week implementation of freedom of access to information laws, and the absence of independent anti-corruption agency, present additional obstacles to  Bosnia and Herzegovina’s progress in implementing significant anti-corruption reforms.

TI’s opinion is that BiH needs a clear anti-corruption strategy that should be adopted by Parliamentary Assembly of BiH, with participation of civil society organizations, whose implementation would be consistent and transparent, in order to achieve satisfactory level of its quality and sustainability within the overall process of anti-corruption reforms, which is proscribed by the United Nations Convention against Corruption.