The president of Anac, Giuseppe Busiaheld in the afternoon at the Chamber of Deputies Annual report on Anac’s activities (Anti-corruption authority). «Despite the efforts made, Italy still records less than encouraging data», said Busia who continued: «The ranking of the member states on the rule of law, contained in the latest report of the European Court of Auditors, the Court of Auditors European Union, sees our country in a position that is still too backward. From the 2023 report on the activities of the European Prosecutor’s Office (EPP), Italy is the country with the highest value in terms of financial damage to the EU budget estimated as a result of fraud and embezzlement, also attributable to organized crime”. Overall, at the end of 2023 the European Prosecutor’s Office had a total of 1,927 active investigations, with an estimated overall damage to the EU budget of €19.2 billion, of which 59% linked to serious cross-border VAT fraud. In the entire report there is no index of corruption in Italy.
The reference, as we have seen, is only in particular to the European Prosecutor’s Office, the only one which, albeit in the specific context of VAT-related fraud, can provide numerous data. No mention, however, this year of the Transparency ranking (mentioned only three times in relation to events organized together with the Anac) which measures corruption only on the basis of citizens’ perception, therefore in the absence of objective data, with serious effects on the ability to attract investments. President Busia’s choice to remove that ranking from the report could be the indirect consequence of the fact that in December the UN had approved, during its tenth Anti-Corruption Conference, a resolution from the Minister of Justice Carlo Nordio therefore it was necessary to move away from the misleading logic of Transparency and instead embrace “jurimetric” indicators, starting with the positive valorisation of intensity in criminal action.
If it is true that Anac is an independent body, on a methodological level it could perhaps not fail to take note of what Italy brought home just a few months ago. Perhaps we are in the presence of a change of pace, albeit apparently imperceptible, on the part of the Anti-Corruption Authority. Even «when it doesn’t kill – Busia continued in illustrating his report to Montecitorio -, corruption causes inestimable damage, refining its weapons with increasingly subtle means. Works not completed or completed with excessive delays and waste of public resources. Healthy businesses that fail due to a market that is not very open and transparent. Young excellences forced to look abroad for opportunities for professional fulfillment, taken away from their homeland by non-transparent competitions.” Busia therefore hoped for the government’s support for the approval of the EU anti-corruption directive, “so as to be able to have as soon as possible a regulatory instrument that is so essential to ensure growth in Europe inspired by its founding values”.
We remember that in July, in the EU Policies Committee of the Chamber, an opinion from the centre-right and the Third Pole was approved against the anti-corruption directive which considers the crime of abuse of office as a central element among the anti-corruption measures. While the Anac, heard twice in the context of the hearings on the Nordio bill, had formulated “considerations aimed essentially at maintaining the crime in question in the system – albeit with a careful reformulation of the regulatory precept – both in consideration of the guidelines provided in the both internationally and for reasons of stability of the internal legal system”.
Now the draft directive presented by the Commission in May 2023 is being examined by the Council, Busia recalled. However, it is not a given, on the contrary, that Italy will fully give its support for two factors. First: on the sidelines of G7 Justice held last week in Venice, Minister Nordio, during a bilateral meeting with the German Federal Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann, had an exchange of views on the proposed EU directive on anti-corruption, «finding himself – we read in a note from via Arenula – on the same line of thought regarding the issues of abuse of office and influence peddling and agreed on the need to continue working together on the text of the directive proposed by the Commission, also taking into account the fact of its presentation without a impact assessment”.
Second: the Keeper of the Seals, in his report to Parliament at the beginning of the year, defending his rule on the repeal of abuse of office had said: it “has been modified four, five, six times, without ever achieving results”. For some «the repeal would conflict with the Merida resolution, in general, and with the constraints imposed by Europe, in particular. This too is a colossal lie. Let’s start from the Merida text: the Merida text does not at all impose the introduction of the crime of abuse of office” because it states that “each State “will consider the opportunity to adopt it””, therefore no obligation. As regards the European Union resolution, it «consists of a simple proposal for a directive, of which we know neither the when, nor the if, nor the what, nor the how: it is simply a poorly done copying of what is the misinterpretation of Merida’s binding obligation.”
The only other data that Busia wanted to pay attention to, without however implying that Italy is a corrupt country, is the following: «In 2023, direct assignments represented, by number, over 90% of the total (78% if contracts under 40,000 euros are excluded from the set, the maximum concentration is naturally recorded in small-sized relationships and the percentages by value are naturally different). The percentage rises above 95% if negotiated procedures are also considered.
The new Code, in addition to not providing for the obligation of notices or tenders for works up to 5 million euros, allows the purchase of goods or entrusting services up to 140,000 euros without even the obligation to request multiple estimates. During the discussion of the legislation, we highlighted the consequent risk of assignments to the closest and most connected operators, instead of the most deserving ones, with a foreseeable increase in costs”.
