In June 2008, the Office of the Prime Minister received a request from the Faculty of Social Sciences to submit the 2004 survey on the economic and business environment, business ethics and unofficial payments in Slovenia. After reviewing archival material kept by the Government of the Republic of Slovenia, we have established that we do not have a copy at our disposal of the aforementioned survey, which had been ordered by the office of the then Prime Minister, Anton Rop, and carried out in January 2004. The present Government was not acquainted with this on taking office, nor was the survey submitted during the handover in December 2004.
The substantiation of the Resolution on the Prevention of Corruption in the Republic of Slovenia of 2004 clearly indicates that the survey had revealed that 62% of Slovenian managers considered corruption in Slovenia a serious problem. This was 18.6 percentage points higher than in 2002. The comparison of the research carried out by the Office for the Prevention of Corruption in 2002 with that carried out by the Prime Minister’s Office in 2004 shows that during Anton Rop’s Government’s term of office the level of corruption among entrepreneurs had increased.
A similar survey for 2006, ordered by the Commission for the Prevention of Corruption, was published in 2007 and is available online. This research is encouraging and has shown that, in the opinion of the people surveyed, there has been less corruption during Janez Janša’s Government’s term of office, the level being similar to that of 2002. The survey asked: “On a scale from 1 to 5, how would you rate the seriousness of corruption in Slovenia?” On average, the rating by small, medium-sized and large enterprises was 3.76 (3.99 in 2004), 3.48 (3.71 in 2004) and 3.26 (3.59 in 2004), respectively. It can be established that during the present Government’s term of office the atmosphere among entrepreneurs and enterprises is “freer”, with less corruption than during the previous Government’s term of office.
However, the question of why Anton Rop’s Government failed to submit the aforementioned research to us during the handover remains unanswered.
