Tag Archives | Italy

L’Aquila: Rebuilding lives beyond corruption

While politicians are busy recomposing the puzzle, people are struggling to make ends meet. Citizens are aware of the toll that corruption takes on their present and on their future and the youth is ready to speak up and claim its rights to fair and clean governance, as the following video shows.

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Fighting corruption in Italy is an uphill struggle

The current scandal of Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS), Italy’s third biggest bank, is a good illustration of how a lack of transparency negatively affects the fight against corruption in Italy. In general, ordinary citizens have little means to monitor and evaluate what goes on in either the public or private sectors. This is […]

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Italy corruption vote: new law, new start?

Update: Italian deputies voted 481 to 19 in favour of the law on Wednesday 31 October. Read Transparency International Italy’s press release here. Tomorrow, Italy’s Chamber of Deputies will finally vote on a new anti-corruption law, following a debate tonight. The bill was already approved by the Senate on 18 October369. While no panacea for […]

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Will Berlusconi sentence stick?

Exceptionally high numbers of cases are being dismissed in Italy: from 2005-2009, 10 to 13 per cent of all criminal court proceedings have been closed because they ran out of time, meaning that one in 10 trials ended with impunity for the alleged offender. That is more than 150 000 cases a year. In Hungary, the rate was less than one per cent. In Finland, it was less than 0.1 per cent.

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Italy needs strong anti-corruption laws now

With Italy once again awash with corruption scandals and parliament delaying the approval of new, tougher anti-corruption laws, Transparency International’s latest assessment of Italy’s ability to fight corruption and the strengths of its institutions, published on 30 March, was well timed. The scandals, according to Maria Teresa Brassaiolo, chair of Transparencia Italia, should not surprise anyone, which is […]

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Corruption in Europe: Taking the pulse, prescribing reform

Paul Zoubkov and Helen Turek talk about Transparency International’s Europe wide initiative to improve national anti-corruption systems. Good governance, accountability and rule of law are among the key hallmarks of a healthy society, and yet right across Europe, there is a deep sense of frustration that key national institutions and actors are not living up […]

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Timed out? Italian authorities told off by GRECO – and by their citizens

In Italy, one in ten criminal proceedings is dismissed during the prosecution phase because the statutes of limitations expire. Making matters worse: proceedings can effectively be closed, even if an offender has been found guilty in the first instance, in case the appeal process exceeds the statutes of limitations. Not surprisingly, our recent comparative research […]

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