In Slovakia these days, a policeman's lot is not a happy one - especially if he happens to be corrupt. During the first six months of this year, more than 90 police officers have been charged with accepting bribes and the authorities say that more prosecutions are on the way.

The charges are part of an anti-corruption drive aimed at cleaning up Slovakia's public service and monitoring its links with private business.

"Of course it's bad news if so many police officers are suspected of taking bribes. But it shows that something is being done and that corrupt public servants will be rooted out," said Mr Jan Figel, Slovakia's chief negotiator with the EU.

Governments throughout central and eastern Europe are recognising the problem of corruption as a major obstacle in the way of creating an efficient market economy and a serious deterrent to foreign investment.

In the Czech Republic, a number of suspected fraudsters within the banking system were arrested earlier this year. And Lithuania has set up an anti-corruption unit that exclusively targets the public service, including judges and prosecutors.

By its nature, corruption is difficult to measure statistically but there is no doubt that it is a serious problem in eastern Europe. In Transparency International's corruption rankings for 1999, most of the states that have applied to join the EU are in the bottom half of the table, alongside poorer countries in Africa and Latin America. (The Republic is in 15th place, a little better than the EU average.)

A recent survey in Bulgaria found that one firm in five had been asked to pay bribes in the past year and foreign investors say that paying bribes can add up to 20 per cent to business costs.

"Corruption has many forms in these countries. One is a typical conflict of interest situation and accommodating friends and cronies. The area of petty bribery is still prevalent although here in Lithuania, it's not as bad as elsewhere," said Mr Vytas Gruodis, director general of the Lithuanian Development Agency.

The huge privatisation programmes of the 1990's were a breeding ground for corruption and cronyism, as businessmen persuaded officials to tilt the tender terms in their direction. In Slovakia, the former prime minister Mr Vladimar Meciar used privatisation to create a friendly business class made up of his own cronies and supporters.

Mr Gruodis blames the legacy of communist rule for much of today's corruption, which he sees as a continuation of the old system of cronyism and exchanging favours.

"Business ethics as such were non-existent. There was no private sector business so the pattern in Soviet times was to get industrial progress by greasing the wheels. Lithuanian industrialists in the old days were famous in Moscow for being very generous with Lithuanian hams and sausages and other items which enabled them to obtain very large allocations of foreign exchange to equip their factories with modern equipment," he said.

Part of the trouble may lie in the fact that the economies of central and eastern Europe were liberalised in such a hurry, before institutional safeguards had been put in place. Countries such as the Czech Republic and Poland have set up committees to look at how government can become more transparent and the judiciary more efficient.

Most experts agree that making public servants more honest and accountable is an important step towards stamping out corruption. But reforming the public service in post-communist countries does not just mean sacking a few older bureaucrats - it also involves attracting the right people and rewarding them properly.

Like Slovakia, Lithuania is taking a tough approach to crooked public servants, including judges and prosecutors. An investigations unit under the direct authority of the prime minister has caught a number of corrupt officials and frightened many more by employing an entrapment policy. "Basically, they imitate bribery. They come to the office, offer money and if you take it, they've got you," said one official.

Mr Groudis agrees that corruption should be rooted out of the public service and that bribery and cronyism are distorting the market in eastern Europe. But he urges western Europeans not to be too judgmental and to consider the stage of economic development the post-communist societies have reached.

"We're in the very early stages of capitalism. If Carnegie and Rockefeller and Vanderbildt and some major British or Irish business people tried to do business today the way they did business 100 years ago, they would all be in jail. We're coming out of this phase now," he said.