The Hungarian office of anti-corruption NGO Transparency International (TI) has urged the government to create searchable databases of public procurements that describe contracts, show their value, and reveal the parties with whom they were signed.
TI gave Hungary bad marks for failing to put into practice measures introduced as part of the “glass pocket” programme in 2003 and in an act on the accessibility of information approved in 2005.
Central and local government procurements pose the greatest risk for corruption in Hungary. Failing to implement fully transparency measures will undermine the confidence of all Hungarians in the long term, TI warned.
dream on!
Sounds like a good suggestion (from TI). Now it is up to the voters to demand this from the politicians in the next election.
What really cooks my noodle is that the EU didn’t demand this YEARS ago… when you look at many of these big deals (especially infrastructure) like 3/4 of the money is EU funds. In fact, to the extent public procurement is feeding corruption and bad governance in Hungary, a significant amount of culpability lies with the EU, and those member states that are ponying up the money.
EU has some different mechanisms to check that their funds are used to what they were supposed to. I do not think that equals to they have any opinion who should be rewarded which contract, just that their money was “reasonable” spent.
I do not think the TI’s recommendation is praxis in all of the original EU-countries and itself does not stop corruption and bribes. It does though take away some of the hush-hush that feeds a lot conspiracy theories.