Series:Center for the Study of Democracy - CSD Policy Briefs

CSD Policy Brief No. 41: Crime Trends 2012 – 2013

CSD Policy Brief No. 41: Crime Trends 2012 – 2013

Author(s): Author Not Specified / Language(s): English

KEY POINTS ››› Crime rates increased in 2012 compared to 2011 - 15.4 per cent of the population compared to 10.3 per cent, respectively, were victims of crime. The number of victims and the overall number of crimes increased both. ››› Growth of unregistered crimes: for a third consecutive year the share of victims who do not report crimes to the police increased. ››› Growth in thefts: despite the continuing decline in serious crimes such as murder and vehicle theft, there is an increase in crimes against property of the citizens. ››› Victims of crime in South Central and South Eastern regions of the country are least likely to report crimes to the police. These areas are also characterized by high levels of crime victimisation.

CSD Policy Brief No. 44: The Competitiveness of the Bulgarian Economy 2014

CSD Policy Brief No. 44: The Competitiveness of the Bulgarian Economy 2014

Author(s): Author Not Specified / Language(s): English

KEY POINTS ›› Bulgaria ranks 56th in the World Competitiveness Yearbook 2014 – a stagnation for a fifth year. ›› Bulgaria’s economy is reliant on exports, offers low living costs, and stable public finances. Its competitiveness remains narrow-based and unstable. ›› The labor market crisis caused by the financial downturn seems to have abated but unemployment remains worryingly high. ›› The economy is still suffering as a result of the inadequate business environment and the lack of a strong institutional framework, which could foster research, development and innovation activities, as well as adapt the educational system to the needs of the labor market. ›› The 5 main challenges which Bulgaria faces in improving its competitiveness are: ›› ›› Introduce public administration reforms, and more and better e-government services; ›› ›› Initiate performance-based financing of education; ›› ›› Reduce energy security risks through energy efficiency and diversification of supply sources and technologies; ›› ›› Improve regulatory control and compliance quality; ›› ›› Tackle high-level corruption and market capture.

CSD Policy Brief No. 45: The Management and Disposal of Confiscated Assets in the EU Member States

CSD Policy Brief No. 45: Управление и Разпореждане с Конфискувано Имущество в Страните - Членки на ЕС

Author(s): Author Not Specified / Language(s): Bulgarian

CSD Policy Brief No. 45: The Management and Disposal of Confiscated Assets in the EU Member States

CSD Policy Brief No. 45: Gestionarea și Valorificarea Bunurilor Confiscate din Infracțiuni în Statele Membre UE - Sinteza nr. 45

Author(s): Author Not Specified / Language(s): Romanian

CSD Policy Brief No. 46: Corruption and Anti-Corruption in Bulgaria (2013 – 2014)

CSD Policy Brief No. 46: Corruption and Anti-Corruption in Bulgaria (2013 – 2014)

Author(s): Author Not Specified / Language(s): English

The policy brief makes an overview of the levels of corruption and the impact of corruption on the societal sectors. In 2014, the Corruption Monitoring System has recorded the highest levels of involvement of the Bulgarian population in corruption transactions in the last 15 years. In the past year Bulgarians have conceded to being involved on average in roughly 158 thousand corruption transactions monthly.Most corruption transactions have been initiated by the administration through exerting corruption pressure on those seeking public services. The public’s susceptibility to corruption in 2014 is similar to 1999 despite the increase of intolerance to corrupt behaviour. In the business sector corruption’s effectiveness for solving problems has grown in 2014. Most companies do not trust public organisations and do not consider they are treated equally in courts.

CSD Policy Brief No. 47: EU and NATO's role in tackling energy security and state capture risks in Europe

CSD Policy Brief No. 47: EU and NATO's role in tackling energy security and state capture risks in Europe

Author(s): Author Not Specified / Language(s): English

The Crimean crisis and the continuing instability in Eastern Ukraine have turned into a rude wake up call for Europe’s energy security vulnerabilities. Russia has demonstrated its capacity to yield political and economic influence on the countries in the CEE and the Black Sea regions by leveraging its dominant position on their energy markets. Russia has pressured governments to support its flagship project, South Stream, at the expense of the countries’ long-term strategy to diversify their natural gas supply and in defiance of EU’s strategy for building a liberalised common market. Since the beginning of the crisis the EU and NATO have scrambled for finding the right measures to a balanced response to Russia’s growing assertiveness, while striving to alleviate the most acute energy security risks for their members.

CSD Policy Brief No. 50: Overcoming Institutional Gaps to Tackle Illicit Financing

CSD Policy Brief No. 50: Overcoming Institutional Gaps to Tackle Illicit Financing

Author(s): Author Not Specified / Language(s): English

The EU legal framework requires that all Members States criminalise the financing of organised crime. According to the provisions of Article 2 (a) of the Council Framework Decision 2008/841/JHA of 24 October 2008 on the fight against organised crime "Each Member State shall take the necessary measures to ensure that one or both of the following types of conduct related to a criminal organisation are regarded as offences: (a) conduct by any person who, with intent and with knowledge of either the aim and general activity of the criminal organisation or its intention to commit the offences in question, actively takes part in the organisation's criminal activities including the provision of information or material means, the recruitment of new members and all forms of financing of its activities, knowing that such participation will contribute to the achievement of the organisation's criminal activities". Nevertheless, criminal justice authorities in Member States rarely make use of these provisions.

CSD Policy Brief No. 51: Mapping Anti-Corruption Enforcement Instruments

CSD Policy Brief No. 51: Mapping Anti-Corruption Enforcement Instruments

Author(s): Author Not Specified / Language(s): English

Over the past decade or so, the global political preoccupation with corruption has been matched by extensive research and the design of various ways of measuring its level in society. The resulting abundance of measurement and monitoring instruments have allowed a better understanding of its dynamics and have informed the design of some anti-corruption policies. The current stage of anti-corruption thinking, therefore, opens the opportunity for at least two additional paths of exploration: a critical review of existing measurements and monitoring tools and an examination of possible gaps in these tools. The results of the review of measurements tools have informed the design of a Monitoring Anti-Corruption Policy Implementation (MACPI) tool which is intended to evaluate the anti-corruption preparedness of public organisations by identifying areas of corruption vulnerability.The findings indicate that while the enforcement of anti-corruption policies has been prioritised by international and national governments, the tools for evaluating this enforcement have not been developed.

CSD Policy Brief No. 52: Refocusing Anti-Corruption: New Policy Evaluation Tool

CSD Policy Brief No. 52: Refocusing Anti-Corruption: New Policy Evaluation Tool

Author(s): Author Not Specified / Language(s): English

Anticorruption policies have been designed and implemented exclusively at the national level with little consideration of their actual enforcement and effect in individual public organisations. Such a general approach has prevented these policies from achieving the level of sophistication achieved by interventions in other fields of public governance. A refocusing of the anticorruption effort at the level of public organisation would enhance the quality of design of policies and would allow more precise monitoring of their implementation and effect. Monitoring Anticorruption Policy Implementation (MACPI) - a tool recently developed by the CSD and University of Trento experts - will facilitate such refocusing by allowing evaluators and policy makers to review the anticorruption architecture of individual public sector organisations. It could also help the use of benchmarking and policy templates at the public institution level.

CSD Policy Brief No. 53: Assessing the Integration of Vulnerable Migrant Groups in Ten EU Member States

CSD Policy Brief No. 53: Assessing the Integration of Vulnerable Migrant Groups in Ten EU Member States

Author(s): Author Not Specified / Language(s): English

The EU has played an influential role on Member States and their integration policies, albeit to varying degrees. EU standards have been vital in moving Member States towards the formulation of national integration strategies, which have taken into account the Common Basic Principles of Immigrant Integration and the Zaragoza indicators. The process of developing migration and integration management institutions and the correspondent data collection systems has become more apparent under the influence of EU standards and regulations in all ten Member States. The Zaragoza set of indicators in migrant integration are only a minimum list of indicators and States are encouraged to collect and analyse further data according to their specific composition of the migrant population and the legal and policy framework. The use of indicators gives policy actors a lasting perspective and evidence base for policy planning. The availability of these indicators is therefore a starting-point for more shared learning across the EU and evidence based policy making, implementation and monitoring. The setting up of national integration indicators can be seen as a positive development in Austria, Belgium and soon Italy as it helps provide an evidence base for policy monitoring as well as policy making in these countries.

CSD Policy Brief No. 54: Child Trafficking Among Vulnerable Roma Communities

CSD Policy Brief No. 54: Child Trafficking Among Vulnerable Roma Communities

Author(s): Author Not Specified / Language(s): English

Trafficking in persons is a lucrative crime and a gross human rights violation, which affects all EU Member States. Trafficking in children merits special attention of anti-trafficking efforts as children are especially vulnerable to trafficking, re-trafficking and victimisation and the number of children trafficked throughout the EU is on the rise. While there is some empirical evidence on trafficking in human beings for the purpose of sexual exploitation of women, other forms of trafficking have not drawn attention of researchers, academics and policy makers. This means that victims of exploitation fall outside the radar of identification and thus cannot access the available assistance. Having this in mind, a consortium of seven partner organisations sought to explore three specific under-researched forms of child trafficking in order to contribute to the knowledge on how and why children fall prey to exploitation. The three forms studied are child trafficking for the purpose of begging exploitation, child trafficking for the purpose of pickpocketing and child trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation of boys.

CSD Policy Brief No. 55: The Competitiveness of the Bulgarian Economy 2015

CSD Policy Brief No. 55: The Competitiveness of the Bulgarian Economy 2015

Author(s): Author Not Specified / Language(s): English

In 2015 Bulgaria has regained one position compared to the previous year in the economic competitiveness ranking of the World Competitiveness Yearbook (WCY), published by the Institute for Management Development (IMD). The country is ranked 55th out of 61 economies. This is only a marginal improvement and remains significantly lower compared to its highest achievement in 2009 - 38th place. The ranking highlights two particular commonalities among the best ranking countries. Firstly, nine countries from the top 10 are also listed in the top 10 of the business efficiency factor. And secondly, all top positions are occupied by economies which are driven by innovation-based growth. In the policy brief the Center for the Study of Democracy provides the following recommendations for increasing the competitiveness of the Bulgarian economy: - Tackle high level corruption and state capture; - Modernize public administration and strengthen independent regulators; - Adopt education for innovation-based growth; - Tackle energy poverty, energy intensity and supply dependency; - Improve the country's branding.

CSD Policy Brief No. 56: Dynamics of Conventional Crime in Bulgaria 2014-2015

CSD Policy Brief No. 56: Динамика на Конвенционалната Престъпност 2014-2015

Author(s): Author Not Specified / Language(s): Bulgarian

Crime rates in 2014 decreased compared to the record high levels of 2012. Nevertheless, the conventional crime rate remained one of the highest since 2004. Over the past year, more victims reported crimes - a sign of relative increase of confidence in the police. At the same time, there is a continuing discrepancy between data of the victimisation surveys and official police statistics. These are some of the results of the National Crime Survey for 2014, presented in the current situation.

CSD Policy Brief No. 57: Regional Media in Bulgaria: The Limits of Survival

CSD Policy Brief No. 57: Regional Media in Bulgaria: The Limits of Survival

Author(s): Author Not Specified / Language(s): English

The lack of adequate local media is a trend with devastating implications for the regions of Bulgaria. It affects not only the local public institutions; regional economic activity is also hindered by the absence of independent media. At the same time, when discussing the state of media in Bulgaria, the problems of local media are often overlooked. The current publication presents the results of a survey of 179 local media with internet presence. The analysis focused on the mechanisms and factors that prevent journalists and the media from informing the public in an objective, competent, and comprehensive way.

CSD Policy Brief No. 58: Transparent Governance for Greater Energy Security in CEE

CSD Policy Brief No. 58: Transparent Governance for Greater Energy Security in CEE

Author(s): Author Not Specified / Language(s): English

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-Ukraine crisis after the annexation of Crimea, and the EU-Russia controversies regarding the South Stream pipeline project, as well as Gazprom's non-compliance with the EU regulations in several anti-trust cases in the past few years are the major cornerstones that shape the CEE energy security framework and policy options as the region remains heavily dependent on Russian oil, gas and nuclear technology. At the same time, the fragile democratic traditions in the CEE countries, the existing networks of political protectionism and economic oligarchy, and the opaque business practices nurtured by corruption and links with organised crime, have been reinforced by the negative implications of Russian economic and geo-political influence. Russia has exploited its dominant position in the energy market and its long-term links with certain political and economic groups to shape political decisions across the region according to its own interests, but often to the detriment of the home country consumers. The current review of energy security risks in four selected CEE countries, two energy poor - Bulgaria and Serbia, and energy-resourced - Romania and Ukraine, assesses the factual situation per se and the transparency and accountability of energy policy governance in the region.

CSD Policy Brief No. 59: Registration of Non-Profit Organisations: Legal Framework and Recommendations for Reform

CSD Policy Brief No. 59: Registration of Non-Profit Organisations: Legal Framework and Recommendations for Reform

Author(s): Author Not Specified / Language(s): English

Improvement of registration of non-profit organisations (NPOs) - associations and foundations, is a necessary precondition for strengthening the civil society and increasing its transparency and accountability. An easy and simple registration procedure, with no duplication of information and functioning automatic exchange of data, is an important stage in the establishment of a modern registration system. It also guarantees the availability of reliable and up-to-date information on all registered entities

CSD Policy Brief No. 67: Turkey in The Framework of the EU Energy Union: Energy Security and Governance Risks

CSD Policy Brief No. 67: Turkey in The Framework of the EU Energy Union: Energy Security and Governance Risks

Author(s): Author Not Specified / Language(s): English

Keywords: CSD Policy Briefs; Center for the Study of Democracy; Turkey; EU; Energy Union: Energy; Security; Governance; Risk

The successful creation of a European energy union will not be possible without the active involvement of Turkey. The latter is going to play a vital role as the major transit country of future alternative natural gas supply from the Caspian region and the Middle East. Similarly, Turkey will benefit from the development of the Energy Union because it can transform itself in a major energy-trading hub, Turkey’s long-term energy policy objective. The EU and Turkey also share a common objective to diminish their dependence on Russian energy imports, which could provide a necessary boost to the formal energy dialogue between the two partners in January 2016.

CSD Policy Brief No. 68: Monitoring Radicalisation and Extremism

CSD Policy Brief No. 68: Monitoring Radicalisation and Extremism

Author(s): Author Not Specified / Language(s): English

Keywords: CSD; CSD Policy Briefs; Center for the Study of Democracy; Radicalisation; Extremism; Europe;

Over the last decade, radicalisation and extremism have become issues of particular concern for Europe. New risks of Islamist and far-right radicalisation have impelled the introduction of policies, the effects of which are only now being evaluated. As radicalisation that risks escalating into violence is more amenable to prevention than repression, having the capacity to detect early warning signs and trace the spread of extremist activity over time is critical. This brief outlines a set of methodologies for monitoring the risk of radicalisation and the trends in extremism based on an integrated approach to the indicators being monitored and the institutional mechanism doing the monitoring. These methodologies are designed to equip stakeholders – both governmental and non-governmental – with a tool which fuses a broad range of informational inputs; it will enable informed formulation of prevention and counter-radicalisation policies.

CSD Policy Brief No. 63: Extortion racketeering: the vulnerability assessment approach

CSD Policy Brief No. 63: Extortion racketeering: the vulnerability assessment approach

Author(s): Author Not Specified / Language(s): English

Keywords: CSD; CSD Policy Briefs; Center for the Study of Democracy; Extortion; racketeering

Extortion racketeering has long been pointed out as the defining activity of organised crime. It has also been identified as one of the most effective tools used by organised crime in the accumulation of financial resources and the penetration of the legal economy. Although in recent years this crime has not been among the top listed organised crime threats in the strategic EU policy documents, it still remains ever present in European countries. The seriousness of the phenomenon has been recognised at the EU level and the crime has been listed in a number of EU legal acts in the field of police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters.

Policy Brief: Cybercrime

Policy Brief: Cybercrime

Author(s): Maria Yordanova,Dimitar Markov,Todor Galev,Mike Hough,Gillan Hunter,Stefano Maffei / Language(s): English

Keywords: CSD; Center for the Study of Democracy; Policy Brief; Cybercrime

This Policy Brief summarises key findings from the FIDUCIA cybercrime survey, conducted in selected member states, but it also provides an overview of existing data and research on the prevalence of cybercrimes and the public attitudes towards them. The role of current national and European legislation, policies and practical measures are assessed in terms of their deterrent or preventative effects and the potential role for cross-national cooperation and self-regulation to control or prohibit cybercrime are reviewed.