What drives high-level corruption in Europe? A cross-country comparison of Northern and Eastern European approaches to preventive and punitive anti-corruption mechanisms
- Stefania-Alexandra Andrei
- May 12
- 6 min read
Stefania-Alexandra Andrei
Legal Division
In an unstable geopolitical landscape torn by political polarisation, rising economic pressure, and regional tensions, citizens’ trust in political and administrative institutions underpins the resilience of democratic systems. When citizens have trust and feel represented within governance structures, social compliance with norms and laws arises not from coercion but from consent. Strip that trust away, and the social contract weakens: compliance gives way to selective obedience, and shared norms are replaced by competing attitudes motivated by individual beliefs.
Corruption is perhaps the most corrosive force undermining that trust. It has caused journalists to be silenced, citizens to be deprived of basic resources, and, in extreme cases, has led to the loss of innocent lives. At a broader societal level, it has exacerbated social inequality and fueled extremist political movements.
This article aims to establish whether corruption in Europe stems primarily from deficiencies in legal and institutional frameworks, or from discrepancies in the enforcement of existing regulations, coupled with different societal perceptions of fairness. To achieve this, the paper begins by analysing the national legislation regulating the holding of public office, incompatibility criteria, and key anti-corruption provisions in four European countries. It then examines differences in enforcement practices, illustrated through relevant legal cases from each jurisdiction. Finally, the analysis addresses variations in perceptions of fairness to provide a comprehensive explanation for the gap in corruption levels.
To that end, Denmark and Norway will constitute the lower-corruption group, while Romania and Hungary will form the higher. This division is grounded in countries’ performance in the 2025 Corruption Perception Index (CPI), where the Scandinavian countries ranked first and third, respectively, as the least corrupt European states, while the Eastern European group ranked near the bottom of the index (Transparency International, 2026).
The Scandinavian Legal Model
Denmark’s anti-corruption framework rests on merit-based recruitment, rigid conflict-of-interest rules, and extensive transparency mechanisms. The Civil Servants Act (2017) conditions civil service appointments on meeting specific nationality, age, health, and educational requirements. To safeguard against patronage and nepotism, these appointments are made after public advertisement, and permanent appointments are permitted only after probationary employment. The Public Administration Act (1985) bars officials from handling cases in which they have a personal interest, and the Whistleblower Protection Act (2021) encourages reporting of workplace misconduct in both the public and private sectors. Under the Criminal Code (2019), offering or accepting undue advantages, abusing position, and trading in influence carry sentences of up to six years, with public office status as an aggravating factor.
Norway's model closely mirrors the Danish approach, establishing merit-based recruitment and the mandatory public advertising of vacancies under the Civil Servants Act (2017). Disqualification and incompatibility criteria are set forth in the Public Administration Act (1967). Moving beyond administrative boundaries, the Norwegian Penal Code (2005) criminalises both active and passive corruption, with gross corruption carrying a maximum sentence of ten years, potentially followed by fines and confiscation.
The Eastern European Legal Model
Hungary provides an important point of contrast to the Scandinavian model. Despite having established detailed provisions governing public officeholding, integrity requirements, and anti-corruption mechanisms, the practical reach of these safeguards remains limited. Relevant legal provisions include Article 70 of the Hungarian Constitution (2011), which guarantees citizens' right to political participation and sets forth suitability, educational, and professional criteria for holding public office. Act CXCIX (2011) imposes integrity and impartiality obligations on civil servants, while the Criminal Code (2012) establishes liability for active and passive corruption, with high-ranking officials facing imprisonment of up to ten years. More recently, Act XXV (2023) sought to strengthen the system further by introducing confidential reporting mechanisms and whistleblower protections.
Romania's framework follows this structure. The Administrative Code (2019) governs eligibility for public office, while Laws No. 161/2003 and No. 176/2010 regulate incompatibilities and asset disclosure. Law No. 361/2022 provides whistleblower protection, and the Criminal Code (2009) sets a maximum penalty of ten years’ imprisonment for aggravated corruption.
Similar Laws, Different Outcomes
Upon reviewing the principal legislative tools for combating high-level corruption in both country groups, the hypothesis that the corruption gap stems from improper provisions weakens. All four countries feature strong and strikingly similar regulatory and punitive measures, yet two consistently rank among the least corrupt European jurisdictions, while the others remain near the lower end of the scale. This gives rise to new objects of analysis: how existing legislation is enforced and how fairness is collectively understood within each group.
Notorious corruption scandals across all four countries reveal differences in how trials are conducted and offenders prosecuted. Romania offers a particularly telling case: former Secretary in the Ministry of Transport, Marin Anton, received a € 5.3 million bribe in 2009 to award a construction contract, yet escaped justice when his 2021 conviction was annulled due to expired limitations, a result of repeated changes in the composition of the judicial panel (Cojan, 2024). The issue runs deeper in Hungary, where judicial independence itself has been called into question. A 2017 investigation by the European AntiFraud Office (OLAF) found serious violations in most projects involving EU funds and clear evidence of conflicts of interest. Among those involved, István Tiborcz, son-in-law of former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, denied any wrongdoing, while the case was ultimately dismissed by Hungarian authorities (Bayer, 2019).
Unlike the high-corruption group, Scandinavian court cases do not generally involve systemic delays or a lack of judicial independence. Instead, they showcase prosecutorial discretion and occasionally lenient sentencing. In Denmark, senior civil servant Britta Nielsen was sentenced in 2018 to 6.5 years for embezzling € 15.7 million (BBC News, 2020), while Norwegian police officer Eirik Jensen received the maximum 21-year sentence for gross corruption and complicity in the large-scale smuggling of hashish, a ruling that the Supreme Court upheld (BBC News, 2017). Both cases illustrate a consistent pattern: institutional rank offered no protection, and the law was applied without exception to safeguard the general public interest.
Institutional Legacy and Societal Trust
The enforcement gap between the two groups cannot be fully accounted for without examining how citizens and officials perceive the fairness of the legal system. In post-communist states such as Hungary and Romania, prolonged periods of authoritarian rule produced institutions that are widely perceived as serving certain interests rather than applying rules universally (Grzymala-Busse, 2007). In these countries, informal solutions, such as using contacts, offering favours, and bypassing bureaucracy, emerge less as deviant behaviour and more as rational responses to an unreliable system in which elites evade punishment and personal networks open doors. By contrast, in Scandinavian countries, the uninterrupted democracy and meritocratic recruitment generated high levels of generalised trust (Rothstein & Uslaner, 2005). This trust, in turn, is self-reinforcing, as consistent enforcement makes corruption not only legally risky but also socially unacceptable.
Conclusion
Drawing on this analysis, the corruption gap between the two country groups cannot be attributed to deficiencies in formal legislation. Across all four jurisdictions, the regulatory frameworks governing public officeholding, integrity requirements, and anti-corruption mechanisms are comparable in terms of content and completeness. Instead, what appears to diverge is their practical implementation. In Hungary and Romania, the universality of law, legal certainty, and judicial independence have not consistently functioned as absolute imperatives, while in Denmark and Norway, all three have been repeatedly affirmed by the resolution of high-level corruption cases.
Therefore, mitigating the corruption crisis in the Eastern European group will require more than legislative reforms. To address root causes, the governing institutions and public officials will first have to rebuild their credibility in order to generate the social trust that turns legal norms into internalised standards of conduct.
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