The percentage of Europeans who consider the judiciary to be independent and the public sector to be uncorrupt varies considerably by country, but is generally low, close to 50% on a European scale, as is confidence in the European Parliament.

On the occasion of her World Anti-Corruption Day where 9ⁱⁿ December, Eurostat attempts to answer the question whetherDo citizens trust justice and European institutions?»

In particular, the percentage of Europeans who consider the judiciary really independent or fairly independent does not exceed 53% at the level of “27”.as evidenced by the relevant data presented on the website of the statistical service of the European Union.

“Independence is a fundamental pillar of an orderly and efficient justice system. What percentage of the population in your country considers (including the degree of independence of the judiciary) to be good or fairly good?» Answering a related question (with data from DG Communication), Eurostat estimates Greece at 53%, exactly the same level as the European average.

Since 2017, the percentage of Greeks who consider the Greek judiciary to be independent or sufficiently independent does not exceed 54%, while this year especially, the corresponding percentage seems to have dropped to 53%. However, in comparison, in many other EU countries the corresponding percentage is even lower. Countries such as Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Croatia, Cyprus, Slovakia, Slovenia, Poland, Spain, Portugal, etc. in this particular issue, they are lower than Greece.

How citizens perceive the work of justice is, of course, also related to the fight against the phenomena of corruption in each country. In this regard, however, a Greek “paradox” arises compared to other EU Member States, since in our country many consider the state apparatus and the public sector in general to be corrupt, but to a certain extent accept at least the independence of the judiciary.

“On a scale from 0 (very corrupt) to 100 (not at all corrupt), how corrupt do you think the public sector is in your country?» Answering this question (using data from Transparency International), Eurostat estimates Greece at 49% and the EU as a whole at 64%. Only four EU countries rank below Greece as even more “corrupt”: Bulgaria (42%), Croatia (47%), Romania (45%) and Hungary (43%).

“Do you trust the European Parliament? How many people in your country share the same opinion as you?» Regarding this particular issue, the percentage of the population that appears to have confidence in the European Parliament in Greece no longer exceeds 44%. For comparison, the corresponding percentage in our country in 2007 was 77%, in 2009 – 60%, and in 2015 – only 26%. In other words, we are talking about a rate that was high and then collapsed in the midst of a crisis before starting to rise again.