Research by the Transparency International covering 26 European capitals shows Belgrade and Sarajevo in “the red,” among the least transparent cities, Transparency Serbia (TS) said on Monday, the Beta news agency reported.

The capitals were tested based on 14 indicators, including the access to information about the decision-making process, money spending, public procurement and ethic rules.

The researchers asked for data and documents for 12 of the indicators on the websites, while the remaining two they demanded based on free access to information of public importance.

Since the study is a pilot project, with relatively small number of indicators, the cities are not ranked but put into three categories: green, where are those with at least 75 percent of the maximum number of points, yellow for those with 50-75 percent score and red for those that scored less than a half of the total number of points.

Besides Belgrade and Sarajevo, other cities in the red zone are Athens, Stockholm, Chisinau, the capital of Moldova, and Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. Serbia’s capital has only three positive indicators – its website offers data on public calls and agreements on public procurement, as well as budget information.

Out of other regional capitals, Sarajevo scored five green and one yellow indicator, Skopje seven green, Ljubljana eight green and two yellow, while the best score recorded Pristina with 12 green and one yellow indicator.

Among the best scorers in the rest of Europe were Kyiv, Madrid, Prague, Tallinn and Vilnius; the yellow ones were Amsterdam, Berlin, Bern, Bratislava, Bucharest, Lisbon, Ljubljana, London, Moscow, Oslo, Riga, Rome and Sofia.