Bosnia and Herzegovina second worst-ranked country in Europe regarding corruption: Dysfunctional judiciary is the key problem

(Patria) - Bosnia and Herzegovina ranks worst in the region in this year's Corruption Perception Index (CPI) published by Transparency International (TI), and has become the second worst-positioned country in Europe when it comes to the state of corruption in the country. Only Russia has a worse result than BiH, which this year has a score of 35, on a scale from 0 (worst) to 100 (best result). Although BiH received one point higher than last year, it is regressing compared to all previous years, and this result still places BiH at the bottom of the region and in 108th place in the world out of 180 countries.

The focus of the global CPI research this year is on the judiciary, and the key reason for this situation for Bosnia and Herzegovina in the TI report is dysfunctional rule of law, pervasive corruption amid general democratic backsliding and attacks on media freedom and civil society, which monitor the work of authorities and play an important role in uncovering and combating corruption. The authorities in Republika Srpska are "most responsible" for the latter, having intensified efforts to silence critics through the criminalization of defamation and a series of laws aimed at curbing media freedom and the activities of civil society organizations. In addition, it is added that the Law on Immunity of Republika Srpska, if adopted, will be an additional blow to the already weakened rule of law, as it will prevent the prosecution of high-ranking officials for corruption, who are almost never prosecuted due to the catastrophic state of the judiciary throughout BiH.

The regional report states that the judicial systems of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia are largely incapable of prosecuting and sanctioning public officials who abuse their positions, and this is confirmed by data that TI BiH publishes every year, where we have devastating results regarding the number of indictments and convictions for high-level corruption. Last year, we also had a series of acquittals for high-ranking officials in major corruption scandals such as Bobar banka and Energolinija, where ultimately no one was held accountable for multi-million dollar damage to the public interest. Also, a series of scandals in the Bosnian-Herzegovinian judiciary and investigations against holders of the most important judicial functions have further undermined public trust, as confirmed by research conducted by TI BIH, where over 40% of citizens see corruption most in the judiciary, which plays a key role in the fight against corruption. The judicial reform, which has been insisted upon for a long time, is completely blocked by key political parties, and recent amendments to the Law on the HJPC have not yet ensured the integrity of judges and prosecutors, as this institution has admitted the existence of problems in the application of new powers related to the verification of asset declarations.

A similar approach by the Bosnian-Herzegovinian authorities was seen in the implementation of other anti-corruption reforms, where numerous reform laws were rendered meaningless and adopted only for the sake of appearance of reforms, and the adoption of key laws necessary for a more effective fight against corruption, such as the law on conflict of interest, protection of corruption whistleblowers in FBiH, and new laws on public procurement and the HJPC, is still pending. Also, reforms of public administration, public enterprises, and the most important electoral reform have been lacking, where we again have attempts by the authorities to render the technical amendments to the Election Law meaningless and leave room for vote rigging, trading of polling station committees, and abuse of public resources.

Therefore, in this year's CPI assessment for the Eastern Europe and Central Asia region, BiH is mentioned among countries that have been regressing for years, along with Turkey, Tajikistan, Serbia, and Russia, which are recording their worst results to date. On the other hand, some countries from this region have made significant progress in the fight against corruption in the last ten years, including Moldova, Ukraine, North Macedonia, and Kosovo.