Kosovo marks improvement in corruption perception index, Albania deteriorates

For last year, Albania ranks 91st out of 180 countries, with 38 points leaving Macedonia alone, while sharing the position with Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Balkan region.

A year ago, Albania had only one more point, but held the 83rd position, along with Bosnia.

Kosovo, on the other hand, has scored improvement, as it has climbed from 95th place for 2016 (36th), to 85th (at 39 points), broadcast the TCH.

As for Eastern and Southeast Europe, 2017 has marked an increase in authoritarianism throughout this part of the old continent, thus disturbing anticorruption efforts and threatening civil rights and freedoms. In this region, nongovernmental organisations and independent media have had challenges to monitoring and criticising their decision-makers.

Examples are taken in Poland, where government troops have taken control of and distributed vital funds to nongovernmental organisations, as well as Romania, where the government passed a bill establishing unproportional reporting requirements for nongovernmental organisations.

The report analyses 180 countries based on the level of public sector perception of corruption, through a scale of 0 to 100 points, where zero shows a highly corrupt country, while 100 a country without corruption. Top of the list is New Zealand, followed by Denmark, Finland, Norway and Switzerland.