Difference between revisions of "Pari pod masata (Bulgaria)"

|style="font-size:1.1em;"| Pari-pod-masata is a colloquial term in Bulgarian that refers to informal payments to public officials. It literally translates as ‘money-under-the-table’, ‘money-under-the-counter’ or ‘under-the-counter-payments’. These informal payments made by citizens to public servants, consist of cash and/or commodities for favours in public sector (healthcare, administration, education and customs). The favour provided by the public servant takes the form of preferential treatments such as faster provision, ensured quality, or evasion of state regulations. On the one hand, it is related to the shadow economy because it is an unregulated transaction and represents administrative and civil misbehaviour. On the other hand, money-under-the-table is associated with tipping and gift giving because it is culturally accepted in Bulgaria to express gratitude materially to the servant for his/her time and attention (Grodeland, Koshechkina & Miller 2000: 309). The prominence of this practice has been shown in the annual report of the European Commission for 2019 where Bulgaria figured at the first place in the EU by size of informal payments in the healthcare sector (European Union 2019: 56). Pari-pod-masta is far from unique. Analogous practices can be found in Greece ([[fakelaki]]), Latvia ([[aploksne]]), Hungary ([[halapénz]]), Middle East and North Africa ([[baksheesh]]).  

Although studies of informal payments started being reported only after 1989, films and literature have described pari pod masata transactions during the socialist regime. Due to the shortage of commodities, gifts were a widespread practice that recognised the official’s personality outside of his/her job and aimed at establishing a personal relationship that would later lead to the use of informal networks, known in Bulgaria as [[vruzki]] (Chavdarova, 2018, p. 64-67). The comedy Toplo (Warmth) of 1978 illustrates the hardships of installing a central heating system in a building in the city center of Sofia. In the scene when the residents of the building discuss what is necessary to hand in the inquiry for the installation to the council of Sofia, they state that they had filled the document forms and collected the pari pod masata (Yanchev 1978). This scene implies that if they do not provide the informal payment alongside the necessary documents, their inquiry would not be handed in to the competent officials.