(BERLIN) - Balkan states are struggling to reduce corruption to achieve the standards needed to join the European Union, said a report by corruption watchdog Transparency International (TI) released Tuesday.

"Despite extensive reforms and external incentives in the framework of the European Union pre-accession process, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Bosnia-Hercegovina are not perceived as having significantly improved their anti-corruption stance," the report said.

Croatia and Macedonia are already EU candidates, while Montenegro, Serbia and Bosnia hope to attain the status soon, having only signed a Stabilisation and Association Agreement, considered the first step towards membership.

All Balkan countries registered scores of below five on a scale of one to 10 on TI's Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), "indicating that most face serious perceived levels of domestic corruption."

Croatia, which hopes to join EU the soonest in 2010, obtained a score of 4.4 this year in comparison with 4.1 in 2007.

Similar progress was made in Macedonia with a score of 3.6 this year compared with to 3.3 the year before.

But Bosnia lost ground, achieving a score of 3.2 compared to 3.3 in 2007, the report said.

The most positive result achieved in the Balkan region was achieved by Albania, improving on last year's 2.9 with this year's 3.4, said the watchdog.

"An official task force created to fight corruption and economic crime has increased the number of officials prosecuted and sentenced for corruption, also building confidence among the public that corruption can be punished in Albania," the report said.

Last year, out of 224 officials suspected of corruption and abuse of power, as many as 53 had been arrested and prosecuted, the watchdog said.

But the fight against corruption in Bulgaria, though a EU member since 2007, was in decline, with a 3.6 score this year, down from 4.1 last year.

"The country is still wary of tackling political corruption, which is closely linked to a very high level of organised crime," the report said.

Corruption there in the past two years, particularly in the judiciary and the misuse of EU funds, had "heavily damaged its international image and reduced trust in national institutions."

The European Commission confirmed in July that it had frozen some 800 million euros of European funds intended for Bulgaria due to its insufficient efforts fighting against "corruption at high levels and organised crime."

In other parts of the region, the report gave Turkey the highest ranking with a score of 4.6, up from 4.1 in 2007.

This came despite political inaction in Turkey during the past two years, largely because of a shift in public discourse about the problem of corruption, said the report.

Elsewhere in the former Eastern bloc, Poland, an EU member since 2004, improved from 4.2 to a 4.6 rating.

This was largely thanks to a special anti-corruption body created in 2006 that had "shown some promising results," such as the arrest of a number of top-level officials, the TI report added.

Text and Picture Copyright 2008 AFP. All other Copyright 2008 EUbusiness Ltd. All rights reserved. This material is intended solely for personal use. Any other reproduction, publication or redistribution of this material without the written agreement of the copyright owner is strictly forbidden and any breach of copyright will be considered actionable.