Lisbon climbs lifestyle ranking

 In News

Lisbon has risen in the ranking of the best cities to live and work, overtaking both Madrid and London.
Portugal’s capital is in 37th place in the cities offering the best quality of life in 2019 and the 31st safest city in the world according to an annual study by Mercer.
According to the consultancy, Lisbon climbed one position in the cities list and is in front of cities like Madrid (46th), Barcelona (43rd), Paris (39th), London (41st) and New York (44th).
Regarding its position in the ranking on safety and security, this year Lisbon was at 31st place, “climbing 12 places compared to 2005” when it stood in 43rd position.
Vienna came in as the top place to live in terms of lifestyle quality for the 10th consecutive year, followed by Zurich (2nd), and then Auckland, Munich and Vancouver which all occupied 3rd place.
However, a survey purporting to be from Ernst & Young on fraud and corruption which put Portugal in fifth place in a corruption league of 38 countries, surpassed only by Croatia, Kenya, Slovenia and Serbia and which has appeared in online media sources is false news!
The Global Fraud Survey which questioned workers from countries in Western and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, India and Africa actually pertained to 2015.
In 2015 in Portugal, 83% had said that bribery and corruption remained widespread while 61% considered that there was a distortion of company financial results as a result of corruption and only 28% believed the business ethics of their organisation were “very good.”
That said, according to the business newspaper ‘negocios’, corruption costs Portugal 18.2Bn a year — more than the country’s total health budget.
By the end of last year, corruption represented a massive 7.9% of GDP according to a report published by the European Parliament group Greens/Free Alliance.
But Transparency International stated in 2018 that Portugal occupied the 29th place out of 180 countries in terms of corruption and was the least corrupt country in Southern Europe, ahead of Greece (59th), Spain (42nd) and Italy (54th).