The level of corruption in Spain demands immediate and thorough attention, but none of the political parties are willing to address it. At least 1,700 open corruption cases are open in the courts and 500 people have been charged with crimes that total more than 40 billion euros.
Every party is involved in corruption scandals, and even though they have the tools and information they need to combat the problems, they continue to equivocate and avoid corrective action. The heart of the problem is that government is not following the rules when taking bids and awarding big contracts to companies, labor unions and management organizations. These groups offered up bribes in order to win cushy contracts, and government officials took them in order to fill their pockets. In the latest example of how politicians let corruption slide, the Ministry of Employment had to reform its training programs because companies were paid to perform job-training services that they never offered. Only 30 million of the 1.7 billion euros that the government allocated to labor unions and management for training were actually used for training.
Even though elections are around the corner in Europe, the candidates are not talking about how to fix rampant corruption in the region. When the crisis began, high levels of corruption were eroding competitiveness among companies and causing other harmful effects to the economy. Our problem now is that politicians do not want really want to end the corruption even though they say they do.
