Amid wave of corruption cases, Spain is allegedly more transparent

That is according to Transparency International, whose annual corruption index saw Spain ranked as the 37th least corrupt country in the world. That is a jump of three places on last year´s result, with the country´s score improving marginally from 59 to 60 out of 100.

“We understand that this outcome for Spain might be shocking, but our survey is a long, complex report made of 12 other big surveys throughout the year. Some numbers correspond to months before the last corruption cases were revealed, otherwise the participants’ anwers would have been different,” President of Transparency International Spain Jesús Lizcano explains for The Corner.

Spain´s political parties have suffered massively in recent opinion polls as a result of a deluge of corruption cases. The Gurtel case, the ERE case and numerous others involving regional corruption have created a sense of widespread disillusionmet amongst Spaniards with regard to how the country is governed.

Such disillusionment is widely accepted to have spawned Podemos, a left-wing political party formed earlier this year that has already damaged Spain´s two major political parties. The rise of Podemos has raised the spectre of an end to the two-party political system in Spain.

Transparency International´s report comes just a week before the Government´s Transparency Law comes into force on December 10. It is a  law that “contains indeed many flaws,” Lizcano points out. There have been concerns that the Government has yet to take the appropriate measures in order for the law to be effectively implemented.

Critics have charged that the proposed law does not provide the Transparency Council-the body charged with overseeing the law´s implementation-with enough Independence. The President of the council will be appointed by the ruling Finance Minister of the day, which could leave scope for the council to be filled with political appointees.

About the Author

The Corner
The Corner has a team of on-the-ground reporters in capital cities ranging from New York to Beijing. Their stories are edited by the teams at the Spanish magazine Consejeros (for members of companies’ boards of directors) and at the stock market news site Consenso Del Mercado (market consensus). They have worked in economics and communication for over 25 years.

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