Chohu: Citizens think that the level of corruption has decreased compared to previous years

Although in a March report by the US Department of State it was identified as one of the most serious problems in Kosovo, corruption, based on the perception of citizens, is decreasing compared to previous years.

This data is part of the report published on Thursday by the "Çohu" organization on the assessment of corruption. Over 1000 citizens from seven regions participated in this research, including 92.2 percent Albanian respondents and 7.8 percent from other communities living in Kosovo.

Arton Demhasaj, researcher from "Çohu", said that the citizens' perception of the level of corruption is lower than in the countries of the Western Balkans.

"In 2021, it was somewhere close to 30 percent, it was the citizens' perception of the level of corruption. Whereas, in 2023, there is a decrease that is below 10 percent of citizens' perception of corruption at the country level. And also, this shows that Kosovo stands the best in terms of the level of perception of corruption in the country. It is at the lowest level from all other countries", said Demhasaj, during the presentation of the report.

When asked about the deputies of the Assembly, the surveyed citizens expressed the opinion that more than 40 percent of them are involved in corrupt affairs. And in the same question regarding government ministers, the percentage of answers about their involvement in corrupt affairs has been higher.

"If we talk about the majority of ministers, the percentage goes to 40.1 percent, when we collect these, it turns out that about 65 percent of Kosovo's citizens think that the ministers are corrupt", added Demhasaj.

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When asked if they were in an official position with a lower salary and someone offered them money to solve their problem, more than two percent of the respondents said that they would accept this payment.

"2.2 percent of citizens declare that in cases where they were public officials in public institutions, they accepted to be corrupted. 7.5 percent said that they would have accepted in some way. Still, this statistic speaks volumes, because about 10 percent of citizens have self-declared that they are ready to be corrupted if they would have been part of public functions", he emphasized.

Regarding corruption in the justice system, over 50 percent of citizens answered that there are corrupt affairs. For judges, prosecutors and lawyers, the percentage, according to the research, has gone up to 60 percent, while for investigating police officers, there has been a decrease in percentage.