engleski

Corruption in Croatia: Bribery as experienced by the population

Corruption is often reported in the international community to be an area of vulnerability for the countries of the western Balkans and it appears that the people of Croatia would tend to agree. Results presented in this report show that Croatian citizens rank corruption as the most important problem facing their country after unemployment and the performance of the Government. Corruption comes in many guises and, in contrast to other surveys that look at people’s perceptions, this survey focuses on the actual experience of administrative corruption and provides information on the nature of bribery and its procedures. This is the kind of petty corruption that affects the daily lives of ordinary people in their dealings with the public administration, the service provider which plays so huge a role in contemporary society that a remarkable nine out of ten adult Croatians interact with it at some point during the course of the year. Such dealings may be for anything from a medical visit or school enrolment to the issue of a new passport or driving licence but, according to the results of this survey, a significant amount of them are of the dubious variety. Although there are notable variations between the Croatian regions, on average, 18.2 per cent of Croatian citizens aged 18 to 64 have either direct or indirect exposure to a bribery experience with a public official on a yearly basis. But when focusing on bribes actually paid, the percentage of Croatian citizens who pay at least one bribe in that period – among those who have contacts with the public administration – is 11.2 per cent, and those who pay at least one bribe in that period actually do so once every three months. The highest prevalence of bribery is observed in the Zagreb and Dalmatia regions, while in Istria, Hrvatsko primorje and Gorski kotar it is below the national average. The face of corruption is all too familiar but the one seen in Croatia has slightly different features than in other parts of the globe. For example, the global tendency is for corruption to be mainly an urban phenomenon, yet in Croatia, as in many other western Balkan countries, it is almost as prevalent in rural areas as in urban areas (11% vs. 11.3%). And while, as to be expected, more Croatian men pay bribes than Croatian women, despite established gender roles that assign more home-based activities to women, the difference between the sexes is not that marked (13.1% and 10%, respectively). Croatian women are evidently no strangers to corruption but they go about the bribery business in a slightly different manner to their male counterparts. They are more likely to pay a bribe in kind – in the shape of food and drink, for example – while men are more likely to use money. Cash accounts for almost a half (44%) of all bribes in Croatia and, although this type of corruption is petty, the sums paid are far from trivial: the average bribe paid being 2, 050 HRK, or the equivalent of approximately 280 Euro . Such cash payments are substantial, bearing in mind the per capita incomes of many Croatians, but it would be wrong to assume that people are always coerced into paying them. More than half of bribes paid (58%) are actually offered by citizens themselves, while in almost 40 per cent of cases they are paid in response to a direct or indirect request by a public official. This shows the lack of faith some Croatian citizens have in the ability of the public administration to function without the payment of some kind of kickback for facilitating bureaucratic procedures. And the existence of deficiencies and bottlenecks in the public sector is confirmed by the fact that more than a third of citizens (35%) who participate in a bribery act do so to speed up a procedure, while almost one in five (18%) does so to receive better treatment. Such a need for better treatment no doubt explains why the public officials paid most kickbacks in Croatia are doctors. More than half (56%) of citizens who pay bribes pay them to doctors, more than a third to nurses (36%) while 30 per cent pay police officers. The latter mainly being paid for the avoidance of a fine or the reduction of the amount fined. The picture painted in this survey is sometimes a troubling one, but data indicate that there is some resistance to bribery and Croatian citizens do not always consent to the payment of bribes in order to facilitate or benefit from a particular administrative procedure: one in four refuses to do so, turning down the request made by a public official. On the other hand, only a negligible amount of bribe-payers (less than 2%) report their experience to the authorities. There are numerous reasons for this: some citizens do not deem bribery to be of the same gravity as “real” crimes, in part because there is a sense of acceptance that bribery is simply a common practice (17%) and also, when constituting an expression of gratitude for services rendered, actually a positive practice (24%). Citizens also fail to report bribery events because bribe payment can, of course, be of direct benefit to the bribe-payer (26%), and because they believe reporting to be a futile exercise as nothing would be done, nor would anyone care (24%). Interestingly, for almost one in three bribe-payers (29%) this survey interview was the first time they had admitted to the payment of a bribe, having never previously shared the experience with anybody, even close friends or relatives. It seems that when it comes to bribery a well-established and selective code of silence still exists in many cases. Bribery not only affects the services provided to citizens by public officials. The public administration is the largest employer in Croatia and its associated job security and accompanying benefits are highly coveted. Some 18 per cent of Croatian citizens, or members of their households, applied for a job in the public sector in the three years prior to the survey, but of those whose application was successful one in six (16%) admits to paying some money, giving a gift or doing a favour to help secure their position. Among those who failed, there is a widespread perception that factors such as cronyism, nepotism or bribery played a decisive role in the recruitment process, while only 16 per cent believe that the selection was made on merit. Certain malpractices may also have played some kind of role in the most recent elections held in Croatia. Data show that an average of 4 per cent of citizens at the last local elections and 3 per cent at the last parliamentary or presidential elections were asked to vote for a certain candidate or political party in exchange for a concrete offer of money, goods or a favour. While Croatian men in their thirties are those most exposed to bribery, characteristics such as income, education level or employment status do not appear to have a clear effect on the probability of experiencing bribery. For instance, although the prevalence of bribery increases slightly with income level, its frequency does exactly the opposite and the average number of bribes paid is actually higher among lower income groups than wealthier citizens, with no social group being exempt from bribery. Nor, of course, is any social group exempt from the possibility of falling victim to the other five crime types examined in this survey, yet the prevalence rates for personal theft, assault/threat, burglary, robbery and car theft in Croatia are considerably lower than for bribery (3.6%, 3.4%, 1.6%, 0.9% and 0.2%, respectively). These are quite modest levels, on a par with those evidenced in other European countries, which probably explains why Croatian citizens feel rather safe in relation to crime. Eight out of ten of them feel safe when walking alone after dark and an even larger majority citizens feel fairly secure in their homes and neighbourhoods. But perceptions about corruption in Croatia are not so positive. Some two thirds of the population believe that corrupt practices occur often or very often in a number of important public institutions, including central and local government, parliament, hospitals, judiciary and the police. Almost half of Croatian citizens (47%) believe that corruption is actually on the rise in their country, 44 per cent believe it to be stable and a further 9 per cent think it is decreasing. Perceptions, it should be underlined, are nothing more than opinions and are not to be confused with the actual experience of corruption that provides the main focus of this report. Nevertheless, such a perception can be interpreted as an expression of citizens’ awareness of one of the principal challenges facing Croatia, both now and in the years to come.

administrative corruption; bribery experience

Izvješće „Korupcija u Hrvatskoj: stvarna korupcijska iskustva građana“ pripremili su odjel za statistiku i istraživanje (SASS) Ureda Ujedinjenih naroda za droge i kriminal (UNODC) i Ekonomski institut, Zagreb.