Corruption perception trends: European Union countries

Abstract

The study analyzes the perception of the level of corruption in the countries of the European Union. We decided to summarize and explore the results of the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) for the period from 2012 to 2022 in all EU countries - Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Republic of Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden. We then compared the 2012 results with the 2022 results for each EU country and identified the three countries with the best percentage performance. Our study identified three countries in the European Union, that saw the most rapid improvement in the CPI score from 2012 to 2022: Greece (+44%), Italy (+33%) and Latvia (+20%). These achievements are interesting and significant in two contexts. Firstly, the overall rating of the EU has increased by only 2% during this period. Secondly, our established in-depth study group (Greece, Italy and Latvia) demonstrated not only a significant percentage increase, but also the persistence of a positive trend. We can identify 3 trend leaders - Greece, Italy and Latvia - both in terms of percentage growth from 2012 to 2022, and in the proportion of years where there were noticeable improvement trends. It is significant that this dynamic was not affected by the overall trend in the EU.