Spain compared with other countries

🌍 Transparency: Spain compared with other countries

How does the integrity of Spain's institutions look from the outside? Several international organisations publish cross-country comparable indices every year on corruption, the rule of law and open government. This page brings together the main ones, places Spain among the 27 EU countries and the 38 OECD countries, and compares it with its neighbours and with the countries that usually top these rankings (Denmark, Finland, New Zealand and Estonia).

In the latest year with data, Spain ranks between 13 and 17 of the 27 EU countries depending on the index, far behind the Nordic countries, which top almost all these rankings. In the Corruption Perceptions Index it has gone from 65 points in 2012 (ranked 12 in the EU) to 55 in 2025 (ranked 17).

Spain and the benchmark countries

Latest available figure for each country in the main indices. In all of them higher is better except V-Dem (political corruption), where higher is worse. EU and OECD averages only exist for the World Bank and V-Dem indices (see the methodology).

Perceived corruption

Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) is the most widely cited. It averages up to 13 surveys and assessments by experts and businesses on public sector corruption; 100 is «very clean» and 0 «highly corrupt». Its method is only comparable from 2012 onwards.

Governance according to the World Bank

The World Bank's Worldwide Governance Indicators combine more than 30 sources (household and business surveys, NGOs, public bodies and risk rating agencies) into six dimensions of governance. Four are shown here, on their 0 to 100 scale. The EU and OECD averages are simple averages of their current member countries.

Voice and accountability measures freedom of expression, of the press and of association and the quality of elections; government effectiveness, the quality of public services and of the civil service and their independence from political pressure; rule of law, confidence in the laws, the courts, the police and contract enforcement. Each score comes with a 90% confidence interval of several points: year-on-year changes usually fall within it.

Spain's rank in the EU

The position is calculated among the countries that make up today's EU-27 with data that year (1 = best). On the axis, a higher number means a worse position.

Long series and changes of government

The V-Dem project (University of Gothenburg) uses expert assessments to reconstruct a political corruption index going back long before democracy, so it covers the whole constitutional period. The background bands show who was in government: UCD, PSOE and PP. The EU average only appears once there are data for at least 90% of the countries that make it up today (several did not exist as independent states before 1991).

By government, compared with the EU average

So as not to attribute to a government what is a European trend, we measure how much the gap between Spain and the EU average changed during each term. The average is that of the EU countries with a complete series, so that its composition does not change over the years (19 countries in V-Dem since 1976 and 26 in the World Bank index since 1996). Each year is assigned to whoever was in government on 1 July. A positive value means Spain improved relative to the EU; a negative one, that it worsened. Expressed in points of the 0-100 scale.

These bars should be read with caution. Perception indices react years late: major corruption cases are usually tried and made public long after the events, often during the following term. Nor do they separate what depends on the central government from what depends on regions, councils, parties or courts. And short terms add up to few years, so a single atypical figure carries a lot of weight.

Rule of law and open government

The World Justice Project's Rule of Law Index is based on a survey of the general population (around 1,000 people per country) and on questionnaires to legal experts. Of its eight factors, these four are the most closely related to transparency: the overall index, constraints on government powers (checks by Parliament, the courts and audit bodies), absence of corruption and open government (published laws and data, right of access to information, civic participation and complaint mechanisms).

The 2012-2013 and 2017-2018 editions of the WJP index were biennial and appear in the second year.

Explore any index

Choose an index to see how it has changed in the benchmark countries and the ranking of EU and OECD countries in the latest year with data for Spain.

Unit: puntos 0-100 (100 = muy limpio). In this index, a higher value is better. Source: Transparency International.

Methodology and sources

• Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), Transparency International. Average of between 3 and 13 sources (country risk assessments, executive surveys and expert assessments) rescaled from 0 to 100. It measures perceived public sector corruption, not private sector corruption, money laundering or illegal party financing. Comparable since 2012. We take the time-series sheet of the annual results spreadsheet. CC BY-ND 4.0 licence: the official scores and world ranks are reproduced without transformation, which is why no EU or OECD average is calculated (Spain's position in the EU is simply the order of the published scores).
• Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI), World Bank, World Bank data API (source 3). A statistical model combining more than 30 perception sources into six dimensions; we use the 0 to 100 score from the 2024 methodological revision, with its 90% confidence interval. Biennial until 2002. CC BY 4.0 licence.
• V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy, University of Gothenburg), via Our World in Data. Indices of political corruption (executive, legislative, judicial and public sector) and public sector corruption, from 0 to 100 (100 = maximum corruption; the original 0-1 scale multiplied by 100), built with a measurement model on the assessments of thousands of experts per country. CC BY-SA 4.0 (V-Dem) and CC BY 4.0 (OWID) licences.
• Rule of Law Index, World Justice Project. Survey of the general population and questionnaires to experts; scale from 0 to 100 (the original 0-1 scale multiplied by 100). Growing country coverage since 2012-2013. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence: scores reproduced as published, without averages of our own.
• EU and OECD averages: simple averages (not weighted by population) of the countries that are members today, calculated only for WGI and V-Dem and only in years with data for at least 90% of them. Rank in the EU/OECD: order among current members with data that year (1 = best).
• Governments: prime ministers and party, from the SpainFacts governments seed. In the analysis by term, each year is attributed to whoever was in government on 1 July, and the annual change is the variation in the gap between Spain and the EU average relative to the previous year with data.
• Common limitations: all are perception indices, built from surveys and subjective assessments; several share sources (which is why they are so similar); they have margins of error of several points; and they reflect events with a delay. They are no substitute for data on convictions or investigations (see crime and council accounts reporting).
• Sources ruled out: the European Commission's Open Data Maturity report and the public procurement indicators of the Single Market Scoreboard (single bidder, awards without a call for tenders) do not currently offer a reusable download of data by country and year (only PDF reports and interactive dashboards); the Global Right to Information Rating assesses the access to information law, which changes very rarely, and does not form an annual series.