Poland's progress: international rankings season

It's that time of year again when nations are scrutinised and ranked according to parameters which determine where global business should locate its activities. Last week, the World Bank published its Doing Business ranking, in which Poland advanced once again (from 45th to 38th in terms of ease of doing business). And EF, a language training company, published its English Proficiency Index, which placed Poland as sixth best (!) in the non-native English-speaking world in terms of its population's mastery of the de facto global language. Poland is among the fastest-improving countries in the world when it comes to knowing English.

Today, Transparency International published its Corruption Perception Index, looking at how corruption is perceived across 175 countries around the world. For the ninth year in a row, Poland did better than the year before, albeit the pace of improvement has slowed down.

This is a clear wake-up call to Ms Kopacz's government not to take its eye off the ball. Although Poland is not slipping, the pace of improvement is far slower than in the first two years of the Tusk administration, when the leaps away from Millerite corruption were most noticeable. Whether you tend to be left-leaning or right-leaning (or, like me, seek balance), corruption is something we can all agree on needs to be extirpated with extreme prejudice.

Look at the graph below which puts Poland into the context of other former communist states. Poland has clearly distanced itself not only from the Balkans and the post-Soviet space, but also from the rest of Central and Eastern Europe. Only Estonia, a country that's more Scandinavian than Slavic ranks ahead of Poland. The distance between the UK and Poland (17 points and 21 positions) is smaller than between Poland and Romania (18 points and 34 positions). And this year Ukraine advanced (marginally) from its dire 2013 ranking, while Russia slipped back. Note the effect that EU membership has had on these countries. And note also the general connection between low corruption and high standards of living.

EU membership has brought huge benefits to Poland, not least in terms of the quality of its public administration, now able to share best practices across the member states, better and clearer (though still a long way off perfection) laws and regulations, and a lack of tolerance to corruption. Gone forever are the days when a well-stuffed envelope can buy you the necessary planning permit from the town hall, or a large banknote can let you off a drunk-driving charge.

Foreign investors are looking for transparency, stability and predictability; when investing with a 20- to 30-year timeframe, a government that grasps, wheedles and wobbles is not going to be a good place to build a factory, warehouse or shopping mall, no matter how cheap the labour or the land.

The quality of a country's institutions is paramount; effective, productive public administrators able to carry out their functions quickly and well is crucial to the citizens' well-being.

So a big thank-you to the World Bank, to the World Economic Forum, to Transparency International and to other institutions, NGOs and think-tanks that take the time to compare countries and rank them. Governments take notice, citizens take notice. Governments that fail to deliver improvements get democratically booted out.

This time last year:
The Transparency International Corruption Perception Index for 2013

Also this time last year:
Poland's rapid advance up the education league table: PISA 2013

This time two years ago:
Life expectancy across the EU: more comparisons

Poland continues its progress in cleaning up corruption

For the eighth successive year, Poland has been judged by Transparency International to be progressing in terms of cleaning up corruption. In this year's Corruption Perception Index published this morning, Poland is given a score of 60 out of 100, an advance on last year's score of 58. What's more, Poland has leapfrogged Slovenia and is now the second-least corrupt ex-communist country after Estonia.

Poland is ranked 38th out of 175 countries surveyed - last year it came 41st out of 174 countries. This is a huge advance on the nadir year of 2005, when it came 70th out of 158 countries.

Below: Poland's score tracked over the years, since the first Corruption Perception Index was published in 1996. Notice how the situation deteriorated when the former-communist SLD party was in power (it got no better under the AWS government - when its placemen, known at the time by the acronym 'TKM*', got their snouts in the trough).

The fact that Poland has been consistently improving in this regard is probably the biggest single benefit the country has enjoyed since joining the EU - bigger than all the roads and all the farmers' subsidies put together. For it reflects a change in the mindset from homo sovieticus, the shake-down model that's still all-to-evident across Poland's eastern borders, where opaque laws mean that no entrepreneur can possibly stay legal and make a profit. So they conduct business on the basis of kick-backs to ensure they stay in favour with the authorities. This creates a rent-seeking class of parasitical bureaucrats who destroy value and leech the wealth generated by the dynamic and hard-working members of society.

Below: corruption levels compared across countries touched by communism. Note how EU membership (and shorter exposure to communism) plays a difference.

The changed mindset in Poland is evident when talking to people working in government (at whatever level) under the age of 35 or so; there is a commitment to public service and a willingness to get things done that was not there a decade ago. I'm generalising of course, but things are visibly, undeniably better than they were. It's like comparing mid-February to late-March.

There's a long way to go until Poland basks in the standards of transparency enjoyed by countries such as Denmark or New Zealand. Poland must not sit back complacently. Having made it into the Top 40, Poland's citizens, government and businesses alike must continually press for a better ranking.

Looking down the full list of 175 countries, its obvious that corruption = poverty = corruption; clean countries enjoy higher standards of living. No political party, left or right, can deny that.

And which is the most corrupt country in the European Union? No, it's not an ex-communist nation. It is Greece, cradle of democracy.

* TKM - roughly translated as 'now it's our f***ing turn. The party faithful from the various factions that came together to form AWS were rewarded by middle- and senior-ranking posts in government departments and agencies. Rather than smash the old system and replace it with a purely professional, non-party political civil service, AWS meekly perpetuated the bad old ways. As a result, change has come slower than it could have done.

Poland's progress towards transparency

Ever since I read about the first Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index back in 1996, I've been tracking the results each year, with a particular interest in how Poland is faring. Each year for the last five or six, I've been collecting Transparency International (TI)'s findings. And it gives me great pleasure to see Poland being ranked as less and less corrupt with each successive survey.

In this year's Corruption Perception Index, Poland is given a score of 58 out of 100, an advance on last year's 5.5 out of 10 (TI has changed to a 100-point scale this year). Poland comes 41st out of 174 countries surveyed - a huge advance on the nadir year of 2005, when it came 70th out of 158 countries. (Click on the graphs below to enlarge.)

To what extent was it the civilising influence of EU membership, and to what extent was it the role of successive Polish governments that led to this systematic improvement? Both. The election of Law and Justice (PiS) in 2007 was a popular reaction against the sleaze of Leszek Miller's administration. But the implementation of EU Directives into Polish law, and the myriad training sessions organised and part-paid for from EU money have also had an effect.

Compare the 16 countries in the graph below, all of them post-communist. Note how those in the EU score dramatically better than ones outside. One outlier, not listed below, is Georgia, with a score of 52, so better than the Czech Republic and three other EU post-communist member states (and Croatia which joins next year). But then there's Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan (ranked equal 170th out of 174 countries). And Russia's 133rd, and Ukraine is 144th.

For Poland, EU membership has been a boon with pretty much upside all the way - EU structural and cohesion funds, Common Agricultural Policy payments to farmers, plus the ongoing civilising process that's driving corruption down with each successive year. A Poland that would have voted to stay out of the EU in 2003 would have been a poorer and less happy place than it is today.

This time five years ago:
A day in Poznań

Corruption: reasons to be cheerful

Last week's Economist ran a full-page story in the front of its Europe section about corruption in central and eastern Europe (From Bolshevism to backhanders). I read the story three times, the third time very carefully, to make extra sure I'd not missed anything.

Latvia: "...political attempts to nobble the [anti-corruption agency]." Czech Republic: "corruption scandal rocking the government". Bulgaria: "brazen attempt to rig a nuclear-power tender." Romania and Slovakia: "attempts to reform the judiciary have stalled". Lithuania: "scant critical scrutiny of the activities of its agriculture ministry." Russia: "companies willing to pay bribes; the curse of easy money from oil and gas." Ex-communist Europe: "[A] rising tide of sleaze."

Yet one country from the region conspicuously missing from this rather depressing article is Poland. Every year since 2005, the nadir of Polish corruption, the country has done better and better in Transparency International's global Corruption Perception Index ranking (below).

While Poland may not be as squeaky-clean as Scandinavian countries, it's moving in the right direction.

UPDATE NOVEMBER 2012: Transparency International's latest Corruption Perception Index shows the trend continuing, with Poland's score improving yet again (to 5.5).