The government of Krišjānis Kariņš is one of the most corrupt governments in the European Union

Such conclusions arise from a report published this week by Transparency International, entitled "Global Corruption Barometer - EU 2021."

At the request of Transparency International, a population survey was conducted in all EU Member States between October and December 2020 to find out how the coronavirus pandemic affected corruption in the European Union. More than 40,000 people responded to the survey. In Latvia, the survey was conducted by Kantar TNS Latvia. The survey took place in October and November 2020 and involved 1,001 respondents.

63% of Latvian respondents believe that the government is run by a few big interests looking out for themselves. EU average: 53%

Unfortunately, judging by the results of the polls, the respondents surveyed in Latvia believe that the government led by Krišjānis Kariņš is one of the most corrupt governments in the European Union. At the end of 2020, 63% of all Latvian respondents believed that the decisions of Krišjānis Kariņš's government were determined by private interests and corrupt influence. In this respect, only Slovenia, Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Croatia and Spain have worse indicators than Latvia. On the other hand, less than a third of the population in Finland, Denmark and Sweden believe that their government's actions are dictated by private interests. According to the authors' compilation of the answers of the Latvian survey respondents, only 26% of the Latvian population believe that none of the officials of the office of Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš is corrupt. 7.4% of respondents indicated that they do not know the answer to this question, but 4% of respondents believe that everyone in Krišjānis Kariņš's office is corrupt. In turn, 62.6% of respondents believe that at least some of the officials there are corrupt.

According to the results of the survey,

81% of Latvian respondents believe that corruption in their government is a fairly big or very big problem.

The EU average is 62%. Of course, there are EU Member States (Croatia and Bulgaria) where 90% or more of the population consider corruption to be a fairly big or very big problem in their governments, but there are also opposite examples. Only 12% of Danes and 16% of Finns consider corruption in their governments to be a fairly big or very big problem.

Respondents' answers (%) to the question: how many of the officials of the Prime Minister's Office do you think are involved in corruption? None - 26.1%, Some of them - 46.6%, Most of them - 16.0%, All of them - 4.0%, Don't know - 7.4%

The results obtained by Transparency International refer to October and early November 2020. Since the government of Krišjānis Kariņš later made some contradictory, meaningless, illogical decisions on restrictions, prohibitions and regulations, one can think that during the last six months the opinion of the Latvian population about the government of Krišjānis Kariņš acting in favor of some private interests has only increased. Unfortunately, the government of Krišjānis Kariņš is undermining Latvia's international reputation. Latvia has already gained a reputation for its government being one of the most corrupt in the EU.