As compared to the outcome of a similar survey conducted in 2013, the results of Hungary has significantly been improved in almost all aspects of the areas covered by the survey and in the majority of the cases the Hungarian data are better than the EU average.
On 9 December, on the occasion of the International Anti-Corruption Day, the European Commission released the fresh results of the Eurobarometer survey entitled ‘Businesses’ attitudes towards corruption in the EU’, which aimed at exploring the level of corruption in the EU Member States on the basis of perceptions and experiences of businesses in six key business sectors. The survey covered, among others, the problems encountered when doing business, the prevalence of corruption, the practices leading to corruption, the experiences concerning public tender or public procurement procedures and the businesses’ opinions about how corruption is tackled in their country. The survey was conducted between 21 September and 9 October 2015 on the basis of interviewing some 8000 businesses in the 28 EU Member States.
As compared to the outcome of the similar survey conducted in 2013, the results of Hungary have significantly been improved in almost all aspects of the areas covered by the survey and in the majority of the cases the Hungarian data are better even than the EU average.
As regards the general business environment, the European businesses interviewed in 2015 have a higher turnover and are in a better situation than those interviewed in 2013. The country results show that in Hungary there has been a prominently large increase in the proportion of companies reporting an increase in turnover (+ 23 percentage points, the second largest increase in the EU). Besides, according to the survey, the Hungarian companies are less likely to mention the following issues as problems when doing businesses than they were in 2013: tax rates, fast-changing legislation and policies, complex administrative procedures, lack of means or procedures to recover debt from others, restrictive labour regulations, access to financing, including credits, inadequate infrastructure, patronage and nepotism, corruption.
Although in the most of the cases the general EU trends are also positive, it is remarkable that while the changes are generally small at the EU level, the Hungarian results show significant improvements far exceeding the EU averages. In addition, also in terms of aggregated results, the Hungarian companies are more (or in some cases at least not less) satisfied concerning the abovementioned issues than the EU average. For example there has been a decrease of 18 percentage points in the proportion of the Hungarian companies which consider the fast-changing legislation and policies as a problem, and the overall proportion of 64% exactly corresponds to the EU average. It is worth noting that companies in Hungary are now much less likely to say patronage and nepotism are problems when doing businesses (-15 pp; total: 36%), while the EU average has been slightly increased (+1 pp; total: 42%). Compared to the 2013 results, there is also a notable decline in the proportion of Hungarian companies saying corruption is a problem during their business activities (-18 pp) and the overall proportion is also around the EU average (HU: 41%; EU28: 40%).
As far as the general impressions on the level of corruption are concerned, when asked how widespread corruption is in their country, the Hungarian companies are likely to say it is widespread (81%). However, this result, with a significant decrease of 10 percentage points, is also much better than it was in 2013, and almost half of the EU Member States have worse result than that of Hungary.
At a European level, the proportion of companies that think bribery or the abuse of power for personal gain is widespread among politicians, party representatives or senior officials at a national level has fallen by 5 percentage points. The decline has, however, been even larger amongst companies, inter alia, in Hungary (-14 pp). The aggregated Hungarian result is also better than the EU average; as compared to the proportion of 68% at an EU level the Hungarian companies only say in a proportion of 60% that these phenomena are widespread.
It is also worth highlighting that in Hungary there has been a decrease of 10 percentage points in the proportion of companies that state corruption prevented them from winning a public tender or procurement contract in the last three years, and only 27% of the Hungarian companies are of this opinion, while the EU average is 34%. Besides, 42% of the Hungarian companies say corruption in public procurement managed by either national or regional/local authorities is widespread, while the EU average is significantly higher, 53% and 58% in case of public procurement at national and at regional/local level, respectively.
The Hungarian results have also been improved, as compared to 2013, concerning the question of whether there is sufficient transparency and supervision of the funding of political parties (+4 pp).
The full survey report and its summary are available through the following link.
