A law to protect those that report illicit activities in the workplace

The House of Representatives approved the law text, signed by the Honorable Francesca Businarolo (Movimento 5 Stelle), which also introduces protection in Italy for whistle-blowers, or those who report illicit work in the workplace. All public-sector employees and partly private ones (limited to companies and organizations that adopt the organizational model previous legislative decree 231) cannot be discriminated for reporting corruption and illicit work in the workplace. There are sanctions for the people responsible for anti-corruption in public entities that do not apply the procedures or do not check the report; the identity of the reporting person is protected, even if not entirely as we would have liked.

Giorgio Franceschini, a 35-year-old from Varese, has been working on this since 2013. Graduated from Liuc with a whistle-blowing thesis, and employee of the English organization Public Concern at Work and Transparency International Italia since 2009, the largest global organization that deals with preventing and fighting against corruption. “Transparency International Italia has been working on whistleblowing since 2009. Monti’s government took the first step; then, in 2013, the Movimento 5 Stelle (in particular with deputy Businarolo) first, and then the Democratic Party, took interest in the subject and eventually managed to pass the law. Basically, I worked on the text of the law, suggested improvements and amendments, mixed the various opinions that kept coming up and had meetings with Members of the Parliament. The law protects civil servants that point out those who work illegally, and therefore prevents them from being fired or mobbed. In the public sector the protection is stronger, but we are still working to give a more complete cover to all the categories in the private field,” explains Fraschini.

“Today’s a very important day for Italy and all Italians. Corruption is the main plague of our country and finally we have another weapon to defeat it. But right now we need the citizens to do their part,” announced Virginio Carnevali, Chairman of Transparency International Italy.

“It required many years, but we have never backed down because we knew that this was a right law and that it needed to be added also in Italy. We are also proud to have done our part in order to make this project a reality,” says Davide Del Monte, Executive Director of Transparency International Italy. “The last piece of the puzzle has been the campaign #vocidigiustizia, started in 2016 in collaboration with Riparte il Futuro, which through a petition has gained the consensus of more than 66,000 citizens that supported the law.”