Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've heard similar things about Romania and Bulgaria which are both EU countries.
Romania has high levels of corruption, but when we entered the EU we had high levels of overt corruption. I'll never forget during the presidential elections of early 2010s (or around that time) (we joined EU in 2007) when a member of the loosing party (which would then become our prime minister), Victor Ponta, stated frankly, in an interview, that they lost because his party stole fewer votes (bribing the poor with…
Just FYI.