IKS has launched its most recent policy paper Untying the Knot: The Political Economy of Corruption and Accountability in Kosovo. One of the main problems in the fight against corruption is the lack of reliable data regarding its scope and character. This obstructs the formulation of effective anti-corruption strategies, as data is much too often substituted with hearsay and rumour. Corruption must be recognised and understood - both structurally and as a phenomenon - before the enabling characteristics, found primarily in legal and institutional weaknesses, can be addressed.

 IKS considers two areas to be of particular importance and have potentially serious consequences for the quality of governance in Kosovo: public procurement and the politicisation of publicly owned enterprises (POEs) - the former affecting how the increasingly scarce public money is spent, the latter dealing with the management of Kosovo's largest POEs.

 The public procurement system needs sweeping reforms to remedy the blatantly permissive and non-transparent environment characterized by untrained actors handling large amounts of public money while lacking proper institutional oversight. Read the publication.