Survey Notes Media Pressure on Balkan Corruption Cases

The survey, entitled "Integrity and the Resistance to Corruption of the Criminal Justice System in South East European Countries", was published by the local office of Transparency International in Romania, with help from relevant NGOs in the region.

Transparency International Romania surveyed judges, prosecutors, and police officers across the region on the internal and external factors affecting the ability of the criminal justice system to work independently.

The report looked at a variety of challenges facing judges, prosecutors, and police officers in Southeast Europe who handle high level corruption cases, including legislative instability, the lack of implementation of anti-corruption standards, the financing of the criminal justice system (in particular wages), procedural flaws, and the influence of the media.

According to the survey 56 per cent of legal practitioners at a regional level perceived the mass media as exerting a negative influence upon the independence of judges, prosecutors, and police officers.

Mass media is considered to have a considerable negative influence upon 73 per cent of judges and 61 per cent of prosecutors in the region, the report found.

The negative influence of the media was attributed to several factors, including the lack of knowledge of the legal framework leading to distorted reporting, the inability of the legal professionals to reply to accusations made in the media, and the use of the media by politicians in attempts to influence legal professionals.

The report did acknowledge one main positive effect of the media, recognising its role as a source of information and as a potential starting point for investigations.

For police officers the report's findings show a rather balanced perception of the influence of mass media, with 40 per cent considering its influence to be negative, 33 per cent evaluating it positively, and the rest believing that it has no influence at all.

Independence of Criminal Justice Systems in the Region

The survey shows that the majority of legal practitioners in the region perceive the justice system as independent; with 60 per cent of judges, 53 per cent of prosecutors and 47 per cent of police officers surveyed answering that the systems in which they work are largely or fully independent.

Legal professionals from all the countries in the region revealed that they have not heard of pressures being exerted upon them or upon their colleagues in the last twelve months, with 41 per cent of respondents saying that they had never heard of such cases.

"Nevertheless, almost one in three (29%) practitioners of the criminal judicial systems asserts that s/he is aware of situations in which his/her decision or his/her colleagues’ decisions were the subject of direct and deliberate influencing attempts," the report concludes.

As for questions concerning the awareness of cases in which political pressures were exerted upon the appointment process of a senior judge, prosecutors or police officers, 75 per cent of judges, 73 per cent of prosecutors and 59 per cent of police officers answered that they were not aware of such situations.