In a small country, personal relationships pose corruption hazard.
Editorial: relationship traps
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EU projects come with a notorious load of reporting and audits. A novice applicant may even get the feeling that, dividing the bulk of papers filled with the sum received, it is no longer helpful.
Even so, various experts have asked if Estonia would be making such investments – as are now being done with EU funds – with our own money. And, from here we may safely conclude that without the loads of reporting required, member states might be having a wild time fiddling with the helps euros. Let us add that, in some states, use of aid still has been sharply criticised as questionable.
An EU corruption study conducted in Estonia, Czech Republic, Lithuania and Hungary tells us Estonians nothing that we would not have known ourselves.
Firstly, opportunities for corruption mostly abound at the top, with political decision. And at the bottom, on local levels of actual recipients of help.
This is nothing limited to us – with political decisions, the risk is almost ever-present anywhere. Still, the authors underline the widespread practice of politicised posts – increasing the risk. Talking about the lower end, our poverty mentality may come into play – in spite of severe checks, we manage to stick in some ineligible costs.
It has to be noted, however, that the bulk of infringements still occur due to ignorance or misunderstandings, not intentional malevolence. Majority of infringements being discovered at initial check level reveals the efficiency and necessity of supervision.
Secondly: Estonia has its own specific risk factor of being tiny. Everybody knows everybody. And if not, they know somebody who knows somebody. This also being the case in a most transparent of countries – Finland. Even there, personal relationships have been treated as major corruption hazard. In addition to that, many civil servants and public sector employees in Estonia have to fulfil multiple roles.
Often, it is required – to avoid conflict of interests – that participants in projects not be related to each other. In such a small country this will not work – we just do not have enough people to replace an official with another. In European context, it is quite a curiosity to have projects delayed due to somebody leaving their work. With us, this is reality.
To deal with our smallness, there is only one remedy: honest, impartial and transparent decision making. Dealing justly compensates for being somebody’s classmate, comrade or party buddy. And also: we should treat EU money as our own – which it actually is, all told.