The Ministry for Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (MFAIC) has begun a “close and fruitful” collaboration with the president of the national anti-corruption authority (ANAC), Raffaele Cantone. Its aim is to make Italy a model in combating corruption. The point was made at the Farnesina today by Under-Secretary Benedetto Della Vedova, at the conference on “Anti-Corruption Activities in Italy and Abroad”. As Under-Secretary Della Vedova noted, this is a subject “of great interest to the diplomatic community, a subject on which Rome has shown ‘great commitment’ in recent years, including through participation in international initiatives”.
Corruption: a very real scourge for all modern civilisations, says Cantone
“No country in the world is entirely free from corruption”, said Cantone. “I believe that corruption is a very real scourge for all modern civilisations. There is no state in the world where corruption is essentially absent”.
The president of ANAC underscored that Italy is also a country “where the campaign against corruption reached considerable prominence in the early 1990s and is now seeing a completely new and different approach”.
The MFAIC’s initiatives to prevent and combat corruption – outline
The Farnesina has adopted a set of measures to prevent and counter the risk of corruption within the Ministry. These measures are listed in the Three-Year Plan for the Prevention of Corruption.
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The Plan identifies the following as higher-risk areas: management of consultancy services, tenders and grants; the granting of visas; the granting of citizenship; the budgets of missions abroad and of Italian Cultural Institutes; and changes in legal status (appointments and promotions). The various Directorates General responsible for these procedures have set up risk management instruments which indicate the specific activities of each office in the Directorate, the characteristics of the risks identified and the actions planned to address them.
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In disseminating good practice as widely as possible throughout the MFAIC the administration has issued, up-dated and applied directives, circulars and specific guidance to promote and safeguard the proper performance of its institutional activities both in the headquarters in Rome and in our missions abroad.
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Staff rotation is a crucial measure in preventing corruption. It reduces the risk of inappropriate relationships coming into play between the administration and users. In 2014, 1213 employees out of a total of 4039 – so 30.053% of the entire MFAIC staff – changed their jobs within the Ministry, a figure that is in line with the data for recent years. This very high degree of staff mobility indicates that it involves all staffing sectors to an equal degree.
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The MFAIC has established specific measures in the areas of civic access; authorisation for the granting of appointments; and certification regarding the absence of barriers to, or incompatibility of, appointments. It has complied with the rules requiring abstention in cases of conflict of interest; authorisation for the granting of appointments; work carried out after departure from employment at the MFAIC; and appointments given to persons in retirement. It conducts sample checks to test the situations listed above.
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The MFAIC has set up a whistle-blowing system, with protection measures for any employee reporting improper conduct. The system of guarantees concerning anonymity is intended to ensure that conduct that is not just against the law but also an abuse of power for private purposes is reported. It is also designed to protect the whistle-blower.
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The Farnesina has a Code of Conduct for MFAIC Employees. This complements the general Code of Conduct for Public Sector Employees and provides greater, MFAIC-specific detail. It establishes rules with which employees must comply, on pain of disciplinary penalties. The Code is a useful instrument to identify rules and types of conduct over and above the obligations envisaged by law or by their employment contracts.
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Training initiatives have been set up with the National Administration School. They require participation by the MFAIC’s key anti-corruption representatives in the School’s training courses on this subject. Arrangements to enable remote access to anti-corruption training are being set up for staff in our missions abroad.
