Less small corruption, bigger fear to report it

The number of cases of so called small corruption is falling in Slovakia, states the latest representative survey conducted for Transparency International by the FOCUS agency in late September 2018. For the past three years, only 12% of Slovaks paid a bribe in public services which is the lowest figure recorded in the past 25 years. Despite this fact, the main challenge for Slovakia remains solving the so called big corruption, i.e. bribery counting in hundreds of thousands or millions of EUR linked to public procurement or selected use of power. The survey also showed that the number of people willing to report corruption had dropped in the past 2 years from 37% in May 2016 to less than 30% in September 2018. Up to 58% of respondents claim that they would not report corruption to the police even if they knew about it. The reason behind this behavior is low trust in the police. A Eurobarometer survey from spring 2018 showed the Slovak police is the least trusted in the EU.