Romania launches anti-corruption strategy

A national anti-corruption strategy for the next five years has been launched for public debate.

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Valentin Țigău, 20.07.2016, 12:41

Amending
legislation and the proper functioning of the judiciary are not enough for
curbing corruption, which has proved to be able to kill people, the prime
minister of Romania Dacian Ciolos said on Tuesday, on launching a new national
anti-corruption strategy. He suggested a change in citizens’ outlook is the
solution to this problem. Otherwise, Ciolos warned, no governmental decision
will reach its goal:

In my opinion,
everything, from the small tips we give to public employees to the money we
slip into doctors’ pockets in hospitals, whether they ask for it or not, and to
the corruption in major infrastructure projects, every act of corruption of
this kind, big or small, weakens the Romanian state and drives us farther away
from a healthy society.

Important
segments of the Romanian society, like healthcare, education, public safety,
have been severely affected by corruption. But as the Healthcare Minister Vlad
Voiculescu put it during the same debate, the lethal effects of corruption are
more evident in the healthcare sector than anywhere else:

Corruption
weakens, but not in the way we might think. It weakens those of us who are
already weak. It weakens our society as a whole and it weakens the state. And a
weak state is one that does not build hospitals, does not subsidise medicines,
does not pay decent salaries or ensure decent conditions for patients and
doctors, and does not protect patients and doctors from abuse.

On launching the
Strategy, the prime minister also spoke about integrity in the business
community and about implementing a management style that does not come down to
recruiting foreign managers because the Romanian ones are inefficient.
According to Dacian Ciolos, a new management style means the transparent and
objective recruitment of responsible managers and at the same time finding
solutions to train future managers who will take responsibility both for the
property of the state and of its citizens. He also said that a certain belief
lingers, according to which doing business with the state is advantageous by
default.

Dacian Ciolos
explained that integrity in the business environment also refers to those
cases when companies concentrate a lot of resources and make use of their
connections in order to get contracts with the state, but not to efficiently
implement the contract provisions. The government has its share of responsibility,
too, with respect to the enforcement of certain contracts, and the fight
against corruption should take into account faulty management as one of the
causes leading to the situations investigated by the National Anti-Corruption
Agency or the National Integrity Agency, Ciolos said.

The National
Anti-Corruption Strategy for the coming 5 years is subject to public debate and will be tabled for government
approval on August 10.