Corruption in public tenders, concessions, the judiciary and in the management of European Union funds have cost Bulgaria in the Transparency International (TI) annual corruption perceptions index (CPI), the Bulgarian branch of the corruption watchdog told a September 23 2008 news conference.

In the global rankings Bulgaria is 72 out of 180 countries, the lowest of all the EU countries. Bulgaria shares its position with countries such as China, Macedonia, Peru and Mexico, among others.

In 2007, the country was 64th out of 179 countries. "Apparently Bulgaria's EU membership did not automatically lead to a decrease in corruption practices," TI's report said, as quoted by Bulgarian-language Dnevnik daily.

For the first time since Bulgaria was first included in the CPI in 1998, the country has registered a decline in the rankings.

Despite EU membership, the country still has problems coping with corruption among politicians, which is directly linked to the very-well established organised crime, TI also said.

There had to be a completely new strategy in fighting corruption in Bulgaria, Dimitar Kyumyurdjiev from the Bulgarian branch of TI said. The society as a whole had to have zero tolerance for corruption, he said.

According to Kyumyurdjiev, Bulgaria has changed from a country that had problems with corruption into a highly corrupt country. "The fact that Bulgaria, which is an EU member, is lower ranked than its neighbours that are not part of the EU is unacceptable," he said.

Bulgaria's score dropped to 3.6 points on a scale of zero to 10, compared to 4.1 points a year earlier, replacing Romania as the country with the lowest CPI in the EU. Romania saw its score improve a notch to 3.8 points, compared to 3.7 in the 2007 index.

"It is as if a sick person's temperature dropped from 39.8C to 39.7C, which is far from the optimal health of the individual," TI Romania chairperson Victor Alistar was quoted as saying by NewsIn news agency. Romania had to continue working on meeting its commitments in the fight against corruption, having improved its score by only 0.4 points over the past 10 years, he added.

The European Commission, which is closely monitoring the two latest additions to the bloc in terms of judiciary reform and fight against corruption, will consider the findings of TI's index in its next reports on the two countries, to be published in 2009.

The EC has done so in the past and the "indices speak for themselves", European Commission spokesperson Mark Gray was quoted as saying by NewsIn.