The Slovak government wants to introduce new effective measures aimed at preventing corruption. One of these measures is a new office for the protection of whistle-blowers. Individual ministries will also oversee potential corrupt behaviour, by introducing the positions of the so-called anti-corruption coordinators. The measures are part of the Anti-Corruption Policy Proposal for 2019-2023, which was green-lighted by the government on Wednesday.
"With corruption, it is like with an illness. If you want to avoid being ill, you have to take preventive measures. This is what we are doing - setting a prevention model for corruption," said the Government's office prevention department director Peter Kovařík.
According to Zuzana Petková, head of the anti-corruption NGO Zastavme korupciu, some of the proposed measures are very good, yet there are some important ones missing in the draft.
"I think there should be an explicit mention of the fact that in the future the statement of interests of politicians should not be judged by the parliamentary committee but by some other independent entity, as it currently looks as if the politicians were overseeing themselves," said Petková.
One of the newly established measures is the creation of an office for the protection of whistle-blowers.
"One of the reasons there were not many successful cases of uncovering big corruption cases in Slovakia is the reluctance, or even concern, of people to report them," said Oliver Fecsu from Transparency International Slovakia, adding that it will be very important to follow how the newly-established office will behave in politically sensitive cases.
A few days ago, the embassies of Great Britain, Canada and the United States to Slovakia released a joint statement to mark International Anti-Corruption Day, praising recent convictions handed down regarding some high-level corruption cases and progress in investigating several pending cases in Slovakia. While praising proposed improvements to whistle-blower protection, the embassies noted that the trust shown by Slovaks in their state institutions remains weak according to polls, so would-be whistle-blowers are somewhat hesitant to report corruption.
Transparency International's 2017 Corruption Perception Index ranks the country in 54th place out of 180 countries.