Publications

The current Hidden Economy Fact Sheets present SELDI's key findings on the manifestations, causes and impacts of the hidden economy and undeclared labour in the SEE countries in 2016. The research found out that hidden economy in SEE remains wide-spread, perpetuates informality, which is linked to corruption, and signifies a substantial gap between formal and informal institutions. This gap is due both to underdeveloped formal market institutions but also to the lack of coherent enforcement of the rules, often related to corruption. The immense diversity of scale (19 % in Croatia and 81 %...

The report is based on the findings of the SELDI Corruption Monitoring System (CMS), which was implemented for the first time in Macedonia in 2001 as part of the Comparative Analysis of Corruption in South East Europe implemented by the network of civil society organizations Southeast Leadership for Development and Integrity - SELDI. The United Nations (UN) have recognized the CMS as the system containing the best practices for monitoring of corruption at national level. The system is in line with the UN victimization approach to measuring te administrative corruption levels. It is based on...

The report provides comparative assessment of national energy governance deficits and state capture risks in the Western Balkans and Turkey. It conducts a thorough review of the regulatory framework, the corporate and financial governance of state-owned enterprises (SOEs), and the management of large-scale energy projects from the perspective of corruption pressures. The analysis proposes measures for increasing the effectiveness of public procurement, improving the corporate governance of SOEs, boosting transparent management of large-scale investment projects and enhancing the...

The current report, prepared by the Southeast European Leadership for Development and Integrity (SELDI) — the largest indigenous good governance initiative in SEE — makes an important contribution to the regional approach to anticorruption. It provides a civil society view of the state of corruption and comes in the wake of the 2014 SELDI comprehensive assessment of the various aspects of the legal and institutional anticorruption environments of nine SEE countries. In 2016, SELDI followed up on these assessments with an update of corruption monitoring and a special focus on state capture in...

This paper contributes to a higher analytical precision in the definition of state capture, which enables the construction of measures that would help evaluate, assess and eventually quantify the phenomenon. This requires a more in-depth analysis of the state capture concept and an analytical description of its outcomes involving different social actors (government, the private sector and the society at large), as well as a description of its principal mechanisms. As state capture is often associated with corruption, it would be necessary to differentiate between these concepts and find...

The fact sheets present summarized information on key energy sector governance challenges, state of electricity sector liberalisation, financial ratios of leading energy  companies and progress of energy acquis implementation. The data is based on the SELDI Regional Energy Governance and State Capture Assessment Report (2016), the European Energy Community Progress Report (2015) and the Progress Report on the Implementation of the Energy Acquis of the European Energy Community  (2015). The SELDI Regional Energy Governance and State Capture Assessment Report, as well as the current...

Corruption is a global phenomenon. In a given state, it may take different forms and dimensions, depending on socio-economic conditions or the nature of its institutions. It has rapidly spread in developing countries, particularly hitting hard those struggling to transition from centralised to market-led economies, or those emerging from violent conflicts. Kosovo is one such example. Situated in a region where democratic processes and the creation of a society with transparent and accountable institutions are being hampered by the phenomenon, Kosovo has continuously tried, mainly...

SELDI’s partner, the Albanian Center for Economic Research, undertook in the beginning of 2016 a national survey with 1,000 respondents across Albania, which tracked citizens experience with corruption pressure and involvement, and their perceptions of the level of corruption and anticorruption efforts. The Corruption Monitoring System results for Albanina 2016 indicate that almost one in two Albanian adult citizens admit to being demanded directly or indirectly to bribe public officials (49.6 %). This shows increase of the corruption pressure from public officials on citizens compared to...

Macedonia features in many discussions as a country with high hidden economy. The European Commission has repeatedly voiced its concerns in its regular country reports about the size and proliferation of hidden economy practices. Hidden employment or undeclared work in Macedonia is of particular concern to the authorities, provided the very high and stubborn levels of official unemployment and low employment levels. However, most studies and research on the matter involve a high level of ambiguity, as they refer to specific narrow outcomes of the hidden economy, usually towards a specific...

The national and regional energy security of Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries has become a hot topic of discussion in the EU recently, focusing the attention of experts, policy makers, and the general public on ongoing and future energy projects but also on the features of energy governance in these countries. The interruption of gas supplies to Europe as a result of the Russian-Ukrainian pricing dispute in 2009, the continuing Russian-Ukrainian crisis after the annexation of Crimea, and the EU-Russia controversies regarding the South Stream pipeline project, as well as Gazprom’s...