The announcement of the classification comes on Tuesday while the European Union blocks some 12 billion euros in funds reserved for Budapest pending reforms aimed at stemming corruption.
Mo12345lemonde with AFP
Budapest finds himself a red lantern. “After a decade of democratic decline and general deterioration of the rule of law” under the aegis of the nationalist Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, Hungary slipped to the last rank of classification, published Tuesday January 31, of the NGO Transparency International among the twenty-seven countries of the European Union (EU). At the penultimate place in 2021, Hungary is now going behind Bulgaria. “The evidence accumulates a diversion by the political elites of public money and the funds of the European Union,” said the Berlin -based organization.
This annual record, which has existed since 1995 and has become a very monitored barometer, classifies 180 countries and territories according to the degree of perception of corruption in the public sector. The zero note designates the very bad students and 100, the most virtuous. Hungary posted 42 points last year, tied with Kuwait or Burkina Faso.
steaming corruption
The classification announces when the EU blocks some 12 billion euros in funds reserved for Budapest pending reforms aimed at stemming corruption. The measures taken at this stage have been deemed “insufficient”. An authority known as “integrity” has notably been implemented, counting in its members an expert in Transparency International.
Since the return to power in 2010 of Mr. Orban, his nearby circle was spectacularly enriched, of his childhood friend Lorinc Meszaros to his son -in -law istvan Tiborcz who now control large sections of the economy.
The Hungarian government immediately castigated the NGO studying in a statement, surprising that it has not looked into the practices of “the Bureaux Bureaucracy or the European Parliament”, recently shaken by a scandal of corruption.
Budapest also accused Transparency International “to belong to the Soros Network”, in reference to George Soros, the American Jewish billionaire born in Hungary and Honni of the regime.