Shorouk Express
For many European countries, especially those in the north-west, the annual publication of Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) provides an opportunity for self-congratulation. Being less corrupt – or at least appearing less corrupt – than the rest of the world is something at which these countries excel. Denmark can congratulate itself for taking the top spot for the seventh year running. Finland can celebrate moving up from third place to second. And Ireland can be proud of maintaining its foothold in the top ten, ten places above the United Kingdom.
For three countries in particular, however, this year’s results, published 11 February, necessitate some serious self-reflection.
France, below the average democracy
In Alternatives Economiques, Jérémie Younes looks at how and why France has dropped lower than ever since the creation of the index in 1995. As Younes notes, France’s score of 67 – out of a maximum 100 – places it alongside countries such as the Bahamas and Taiwan, and below the average range for countries that Transparency International defines as “full democracies” (between 73 and 100).
“The primary factor”, the NGO tells Younes, “is of course the high profile cases involving high ranking political figures”: at least 26 people close to the head of state have been implicated in such cases since the election of Emmanuel Macron.
Interesting article?
It was made possible by Voxeurop’s community. High-quality reporting and translation comes at a cost. To continue producing independent journalism, we need your support.
Subscribe or Donate
For Isabelle Jegouzo, director of the French Anti-Corruption Agency (AFA), there is a certain irony in France’s poor performance: “All these widely publicised cases may have had a boomerang effect”, Jegouzo tells Younes. “They give the impression that the phenomenon is ever more prevalent, but it’s paradoxical, because if there are cases, it means that these cases were detected, judged and prosecuted” While breaches of probity have increased in recent years, rising from 616 in 2016 to 829 in 2023, Jegouzo observes that “this could mean that the number of infractions is growing, but it could also mean that detection has improved […]. To fight corruption is to make it visible.”
However, as Transparency International explain to Younes, there are also other factors behind France’s CPI score. “In 2024, corruption was increasingly linked to our everyday lives, such as the link between corruption and drug trafficking, or the Nestlé Waters affair, which directly connected corruption to consumer health”.
Younes also highlights a recent development across the Atlantic which could have an unfortunate impact on the level of corruption in France and elsewhere: “Donald Trump’s historic u-turn in the fight against corruption. On 11 February, the US president abruptly suspended by executive order the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the major American anti-corruption law in force since 1977, thereby handing American businesses a veritable ‘license to corrupt’ abroad, in the name of ‘competitiveness’”.
International corporate lawyer Laurent Cohen-Tanugi discusses Trump’s decision and its potential consequences at length in Le Grand Continent: “Europe suddenly finds itself at a disadvantage, and its businesses may be strongly tempted to lower their guard and align themselves with the practices of their Chinese and other competitors. Hasn’t Transparency International already denounced France’s laxity in the fight against transnational corruption?”
Dropping Belgium
Just above France with 69 points, Belgium dropped four points to achieve its worst result in ten years. Like France, Belgium falls below the average for “full democracies”. Nicolas Gobiet in La Libre begins his article on Belgium’s poor showing with a consideration of Transparency International’s methodology. Marc Beyens of the NGO’s Belgian chapter explains to Gobiet how measuring the perception of corruption instead of provable instances provides a much closer approximation of the carefully concealed reality. “These activities, clandestine by their very nature, remain difficult to quantify. Only the clear cases end up in the courts. In contrast, the perceptions of politicians, businesses or even civil society constitute a precise indicator of what is going on behind the scenes”. Alexander De Jaeger, researcher of the Louvain Institute of Criminology and board member of TI Belgium, explains that there is a “grey zone, a blur around the real figures. By measuring only the established cases, we fail to obtain an accurate picture.”
As with France, Belgium has no shortage of public scandals – Sky ECC or the Didier Reynders case to name just two – but these are not the primary factor in Belgium’s slide down the ranking. “If some scandal breaks out and legal proceedings follow, what does this really mean?” asks De Jaeger. “An increase in corruption, or a better-functioning system of detection and prosecution?” With such considerations in mind, Marc Beyens points to Belgium’s “insufficient regulation when it comes to lobbying. No central registry of lobbyists exists, Only the Chamber of Representatives is currently provided with such a tool. The other parliaments and governments are lagging behind.” Gobiet also notes that the European Commission’s 2024 rule of law report highlights “structural resource deficiencies” in Belgium’s judicial system. “Numerous high-profile corruption cases, such as Qatargate, have highlighted the difficulty of managing these massive cases with limited resources”, the executive director of Transparency International Belgium explains.
More broadly, with 19 European countries in total seeing their CPI scores fall this year, including Germany, Norway and Sweden, “the trend is not great”, Beyens tells Gobiet. “Europe is struggling to respond en bloc to these challenges. The climate of disillusion hardly helps”.
The Netherlands’s worst score in more than a decade
While the Netherlands has only dropped one point and one place in this year’s CPI, its score of 78 is the country’s worst in twelve years, as financial daily Het Financieele Dagblad reports (and illustrates with graphs).
And while the Netherlands is still among the top ten “cleanest” countries, there is still plenty of room for improvement, as Eva Stam suggests in an article published by Trouw just a few days before the publication of this year’s CPI. “The Netherlands likes to see itself as the best boy in the class, a country that guarantees integrity”, Stam writes. “Yet it is the only EU country where ‘trade in influence’, corruption without direct quid pro quo, is not punishable.”
The Public Prosecution Service and National Department of Criminal Investigation (Rijksrecherche) have expressed their dissatisfaction with this legislative gap, with specific reference to the lack of progress in the case against former EU Commissioner Neelie Kroes (a case that exposes, according to some, “the EU’s revolving door between the public and private sector”). As Stam points out, the European Commission has been working on a new anti-corruption directive which would make influence peddling in the Netherlands punishable, but “it remains to be seen whether the Netherlands will accept it.”
Transparency International also note in a recent blog post how voluntary registration for lobbyists in the Netherlands “meant just 72 people listed themselves in 2023, leaving the door open for unregistered interests to influence government in secret. Conversely, countries with better definitions like France and Germany have thousands of registered lobbyists.”
The NGO also has serious concerns about the trajectory of the aforementioned anti-corruption directive: “In May 2023, the European Commission proposed a Directive which the Parliament then built on with a more ambitious position in February 2024 – incorporating several of our recommendations. However, the Council released a much weaker position in June 2024, with some member states seeking to water down the law.”
