Baltic Journal of Economic Studies (Mar 2019)
REFORMATION OF THE INSTITUTIONAL ANTI-CORRUPTION SYSTEM IN THE CONTEXT OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION TRANSFORMATION
Abstract
Ukraine belongs to a group of countries in which political, grand, and petty corruption deeply rooted in various spheres of life and became an organic element of social relations. During 2014-2018, the fight against corruption in Ukraine was identified as one of the key priorities of the state policy. This was also noted by international organizations. The implemented reforms contributed to moving Ukraine from 144th place in 2013 to 130th place according to the Corruption Perception Index. The purpose of the article is determined as to study reforming of the institutional system of the fight against corruption in the context of European integration transformation directed to increasing transparency and openness of the state as an institute and improving the governance. Traditionally, three functional types of corruption are distinguished: political corruption, grand corruption, and petty corruption. The author presented a generalized group of indicators of measuring the efficiency of the fight against corruption, including: Group 1. Economic indicators: reduction of economic losses as a result of the elimination of specific corruption schemes and the elimination of conditions that give rise to corruption; Group 2. Indicators of the activity of the law-enforcement system: the number of persons brought to administrative and criminal responsibility for corruption violations and crimes; amounts of damages recovered; Group 3. Indicators of public acceptance of the effectiveness of counteraction to corruption: assessment of the dynamics of corruption in various dimensions by different social and professional groups. For successful application of the experience of EU countries when developing effective anti-corruption policy in Ukraine, it is necessary: firstly, determine and implement in Ukrainian legislation relevant international legal rules of state, regional, and local nature; secondly, given the successful experience of certain countries, identify a complex of most important for Ukraine factors aimed at providing effectiveness of state policy of preventing corruption, structure them based on principles of priority and the most functionality in order to create a model optimal for Ukrainian conditions; thirdly, develop and form for this model proper institutional support of regulatory character that would harmoniously combine state, regional, and local levels of public administration. The paper determines “direct” anti-corruption effects of corresponding changes in economic governance. It is obvious that direct effects can be levelled by corruption risks in related spheres. So, the delegation of certain powers and financial resources to the local level in the process of decentralization objectively restricts corruption in the relations of “centre-regions” in terms of the distribution and use of financial resources, however, without effective anti-corruption system at the local level, the anti-corruption effect of decentralization will be less than expected. In order to overcome mass violations of anti-corruption norms and rules, it is needed to implement a whole range of measures to criminalize corruption, that is, to establish criminal responsibility for corruption offenses and corruption-related offenses and create a law enforcement system capable of effectively counteracting the corruption actions that we have identified in the study.
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