Squeaky-clean Europe is more corrupt than you think
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. “IT WAS RETRO style," laughs Ruta Kaziliunaite, the co-ordinator of Lithuania’s Special Investigation Service (STT), the country’s anti-corruption police. Last November the former leader of the Liberal Movement party was convicted of taking bribes from an executive at MG Baltic, a trading and real-estate conglomerate.
It was not a matter of hidden transfers to shell companies, but of old-fashioned wads of cash: the STT found €242,000 ($269,000) stashed in the MP’s house and car. (Both men are appealing.) In fighting corruption, Lithuania is one of the European Union’s star pupils. Corruption is hard to measure; it is by nature secret.
But Transparency International, a Berlin-based watchdog, gauges how clean countries are perceived to be, and Lithuania went from 48th in the world in 2012 to 34th in 2023. The European Research Centre for Anti-corruption and State-building (ERCAS), an academic outfit that measures public integrity and transparency, rates Lithuania among the top 20 for both. This is the sort of success story the EU likes to tell about itself.
Europe is home to the world’s least corrupt countries, and Eurocrats see their union as a force for reform. The EU generally requires countries to improve their governance before they can join; its regulations are meant to keep them honest once they are in. Unfortunately, the data over the past decade tell a different story.
Lithuania and its Baltic neighbours, Estonia and Latvia, have improved dramatically. But other formerly communist countries that joined the EU in the 2000s have not. Poland, a relatively clean country, got dirtier from 2015 to 2023 under a populist government.
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