The World Bank maintains its negative scores for Romania's governance efficiency and corruption control

„Worldwide governance indicators” 2009 World Bank report appreciates that governance efficiency, the fight against corruption and the law supremacy are still Romania’s problematic issues, according to Romanian press agency NewsIn.

World Bank’s „Worldwide governance indicators” study researches six dimensions in 212 countries:

participative democracy and freedom of expression

political stability and lack of violence

governance efficiency

regulation quality

law supremacy

corruption control

Governance efficiency – Romania sees a slight increase, but still records a negative score: from -0.15 (2007) to -0.14 (2008). Romania ranked better than 50.2% of the countries involved in the study. The lowest score Romania recorded was in 1998: -0.25. Romania had the same score as Macedonia and tops Serbia, but ranks below Bulgaria, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland.

Corruption control – Romania ranks better than 57% of the countries, scoring -0.06. This is the best score Romania saw for this category, topping Bulgaria, Serbia and Macedonia, but scoring under Hungary, Estonia and Slovenia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania and Slovakia.

Law supremacy – the third problematic indicator for Romania, also recording a negative value, but recording a slight improvement. Scoring -0.05, Romania ranks better than 53.6% of the countries. The last report showed a -0.17 score. Again, Romania tops Bulgaria, but qualifies under Hungary, Estonia and Slovenia.

Political stability – Romania ranks better than 56% of the countries, with a 0.30 score. The evolution was positive throughout the years. Most of the countries in the region did better at this chapter than Romania: Bulgaria (0.39), Hungary (0.59), Croatia (0.57), Poland (0.79), the Czech Republic (0.93), Lithuania (0.73) or Latvia (0.40).

Quality of regulations – Romania scores 0.53, better than 67.7% of the 212 surveyed countries. Romania saw a score of 0.40 in 2007 and 0.41 in 2006. It ranked lower than Bulgaria (0.75), Hungary (1.26) or Poland (0.77).

Participative democracy and freedom of expression – this is the category overseeing whether the citizens of a country can take part in governmental elections, whether they benefit from freedom of expression, of association and whether there is an independent mass-media.

Romania scores 0.48, ranking better than 59.1% of the countries. But the index is dropping, having seen 0.49 in 2007 and 0.55 in 2006. For this category, Romania ranked low in comparison with the Balkan and other Eastern European countries, scoring under Bulgaria (0.60), Hungary (1.00), the Czech Republic (1.02), Latvia (0.86), Lithuania (0.85) and Slovenia (1.02).