Despite falling on hard times with the financial crisis, Greece’s ranking in Transparency International’s (TI) Corruption Perceptions Index has seen a marked improvement.
Although the country admittedly had a low starting point, according to recent figures, Greece’s standing has bettered by 27.7 per cent over four years.
In 2012, TI’s index showed the corruption ranking at 36 per cent, and has steadily improved over the years to 46 per cent.
An analysis of the data notes Spain to have fallen the heaviest in the region, with a 10 per cent plunge from 65 to 58 per cent, the drop unsurprisingly linked to the financial crisis and implementation of austerity measures.
On the other end of the spectrum, Scandinavian countries performed the best, despite a number of high-profile corruption scandals over the years, as reported by Euronews.
TI’s index ranks countries out of 100 through a combination of surveys and assessments of corruption collected by reputable institutions, with low scores often indicating a higher percentage of public sector corruption.