Македонски центар за меѓународна соработка - МЦМС

Corruption is the biggest problem for citizens, unlike previous years when the existential issues such as unemployment, poverty and low incomes, or political instability were the top three problems identified by the citizens. This was identified with the latest corruption assessment survey conducted by the Macedonian Center for International Cooperation (MCIC).

For about 80% of the population the desire for fast personal enrichment by those in power is the leading factor for a widespread corruption, followed by the lack of strict administrative control over corruption, non-enforcement of laws and insufficient protection of persons reporting corruption as factors identified by the citizens  for influencing the spread of corruption.

Although about one third of the citizens or 33.7% were exposed to corruption pressure, and 32.9% were involved in corruption, still corruption remains unpunished. 

Translated into absolute numbers, these percentages show that a significant number of the population had an experience with corruption, or more than half million citizens were asked for a bribe at least once and more than a half million citizens gave bribe at least once during last year. Such projections illustrate the prevalance of administrative corruption.

If we cross reference that to the total convictions during 2021 (82 for bribery and for abuse of office), we can conclude that around 0.015% of the cases have ended up in convictions. This means that institution tasked with tackling corruption are extremely ineffective.

When citizens are faced with life-changing dilemmas related to corruption, such as if there is no other way to resolve a personal or a family problem, people tend to become more susceptible to corruption. 48% of citizens, even if there is no other way, are firm and unyielding to corruption, while 31% would not pay if there was another way to solve the problem. On the other hand almost every fifth respondent or 21% would pay in order to resolve a problem.

If we reflect these percentages on the 18+ population, it shows that 750,000 of the citizens are not susceptible to corruption, but 500,000 citizens would pay if there was no other way.

At the moment, this means a limited source of resistance to the attempts to circumvent the rules, and thus a limited human potential for a collective fight against corruption. The comparison of the ratio of those who accept and do not accept corruption brings little encouragement. Namely, if we take into account the different forms of corrupt practices and compare them with those who do not accept any form of corruption at all, the ratio is 63% who would not accept, as opposed to 37% who would accept such behavior. That ratio is improved compared to the previous two surveys when the ratios were 59% - 41% and 50% - 50%.

However, citizens are not optimistic about reducing corruption. A significant number of citizens believe that the corruption pressure will continue to exist in the future.  Citizens recognize judges, ministers, MPs, mayors and prosecutors as the most corrupt. According to them, almost everyone or most of them are involved in corruption and the numbers range from 73% for prosecutors to 80% for judges. These numbers are valid for the institutions as well, so on a scale from one to five, where one means no corruption at all, and five means the prevalence of corruption at the highest level, 75% of citizens gave the highest scores (four and five) for the prevalence of corruption in the courts, 71% for the prevalence of corruption in the prosecution and over 66% of the citizens believe that corruption is widespread in the Government and Customs Office.

Regarding the trust in the anti-corruption institutions, full or partial trust reaches close to one third of the respondents. Moreover, almost 33% of citizens have full or partial trust for tackling corruption in the Government, 30% in the Ministry of Interior, and the State Commission for Prevention of Corruption is in third place with about 24%. Trust in these institutions has significantly decreased compared to 2019 (36.4% in the Government, 39.6% in the Ministry of Interior) and 2018 (48.6% in the Government, 50.3% in the Ministry of Interior). Similar is the situation with the State Commission for Prevention of Corruption, where distrust has increased from 51.9% in 2018, 65.7% in 2019 to 72.7% in 2021. Trust in the courts reaches about 22%, and in the prosecution about 23%.

For MCIC, the survey was conducted by IPSOS. Data was collected through face-to-face interviews in the period 27 April – 20 May 2021 on a representative sample of 1014 citizens with 18+ years.

The Report is prepared as part of the Project “Civil Society for Good Governance and Anti-Corruption in Southeast Europe: Capacity Building for Monitoring, Advocacy and Awareness Raising (SELDI)” financed by the European Union.

This is the fifth Corruption Assessment Report prepared by MCIC. The corruption assessment survey was for the first time conducted in 2001, as part of the comparative analysis of corruption in the Southeast Europe, prepared by the SELDI network. The assessment is based on the Corruption Monitoring System (CMS).