Approximately 60,000 people from 42 countries participated in the survey (in person and by telephone interview) and were asked the following questions:

• what are the main problems your country faces (choosing from the following options: economy, unemployment, crime, immigration, health, education and corruption)?
• How corrupt are the power structures in your country?
• How effective is your government in fighting corruption?
• Do wealthy people have significant influence on government decisions?
• What are the most effective ways for ordinary citizens to fight corruption?
• Why is the percentage of citizens reporting corruption still low?
• How socially acceptable is it in your country to report corruption?
• Do you think that ordinary citizens can make a difference in the fight against corruption?

According to the survey results, only a small proportion of respondents believe that their state is taking sufficient measures to fight corruption. More than a quarter of residents believe that politicians, government officials and business sector executives are highly corrupt, while three out of five respondents say that rich people have a high degree of influence on public policy.

One of the most effective methods of fighting corruption on the part of citizens, according to respondents, are refusing to pay bribes and reporting corruption. However, the largest percentage of respondents (27%) consider the role of civil society in fighting corruption to be negligible or nil.

In individual countries (except France, the UK, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, Greenland and Belgium, for which data were taken from a similar survey in 2014), TI experts also surveyed citizens about whether they had experienced bribery by traffic police, public agencies issuing official documents, civil courts, public educational institutions, public health care institutions, public health care institutions, and public officials in the previous year.

According to the survey results, the most frequent cases of bribery were experienced by residents of the CIS countries (about 30% of respondents), in the countries in the process of accession to the EU this figure reaches 20%, in the EU countries - 9%. At the same time, in the post-Soviet countries corruption situations most often arise in the interaction of citizens with traffic police officers, employees of educational and medical institutions. These figures are close to those obtained in a similar TI survey in 2013, which, according to experts, indicates a low level of corruption in the post-Soviet countries.

According to the overall results, Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Moldova, Russia, Serbia and Ukraine are the most corrupt countries in the region, with low ratings on almost all indicators assessed by respondents. Sweden, Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands were among the countries that successfully fight corruption.

In its report, TI also offers 4 key recommendations to governments in Europe and Central Asia to reduce political corruption and overcome the public's reluctance to report corruption because of the potential negative consequences:

• Have transparent rules for lobbying activities and a public register of lobbyists so that political decisions can be analyzed by the public;
• Ensure the independence of the judiciary, especially in the EU accession states and post-Soviet countries, by reducing the influence of the executive on courts and prosecution services and establishing a transparent and objective system for the appointment, transfer and dismissal of judges and prosecutors;
• Adopt and properly enforce comprehensive whistleblower protection legislation;
• provide support to whistleblowers and take all necessary measures to further the disclosure of corruption.

The report on Europe and Central Asia is the latest in TI's Global Corruption Barometer, which covers five regions in 2015-2016: Sub-Saharan Africa in 2015, the Middle East and North Africa in May 2016, and the Americas and Asia-Pacific in the future.