Poland's Phyrric victory over bribery and collusion on its way to the European Union

Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject Business economics - Economic Policy, grade: very good, Vienna University of Economics and Business (Interdisciplinary Institute for European Questions), course: Transformation in CEE and Enlargement of EU, 21 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: Despite the bad impression Poland's position in the Transparency InternationalCorruption Perceptions Index has remained unchanged since 1999.Nevertheless, corruption is not declining but rather growing in several areas. Asa matter of fact, the number of scandals reporting irregularities involvingpoliticians and other public officials has been on the rise for the last two or threeyears. So is the discussion of legislation and other measures. Attention shall bedrawn to the fact that the considerably higher number of convictions forcorruption since 1998, as well as the more common presence of corruptionrelatedtopics in the media is rather due to greater media activity than thanks tothe effectiveness of institutions of prosecution.According to several surveys corruption is most widespread in the healthcaresystem, judiciary, sub-national governments and central State administration.Furthermore, it is common in privatisation and off-budget agencies activities,political party finance, as well as in the tax and customs administration.Corruption becomes an important issue even in the private sector.This paper aims to elaborate the impact of the EU accession on the anticorruptionpolicy. After presenting data and main areas of corruption, the mostimportant institutions and legislation will be dealt with. It seems that publicprocurement is the area the most compatible with EU anti-corruption legislation.Consequently, this topic will be discussed in detail in this paper. As alreadymentioned, corruption in other areas is rather increasing as decreasing. Thereasons and consequences for this development will not be dealt with explicitlyin this paper, for, apparently, the EU accession process has not yet put enoughpressure on authorities to take measures against these widespread practices.