Avviso Pubblico Charter

Code of ethics for good politics

The European Commission, in its Strategy to tackle Organised Crime 2021-2025, wrote that “the local dimension is also key to reduce the space for criminal groups to fill their ranks”. The same awareness, in 1996, inspired the birth of Avviso Pubblico, an Italian national association that connects municipalities, provinces, and regions concretely committed to promoting and spreading the culture of transparency, responsibility, and integrity in order to prevent and tackle organised crime and corruption.

The many years of Italian experience in fighting mafias and corruption systems have shown that the action of law enforcement and the judiciary alone, while certainly necessary and important, is not enough. Politics, economy, and society must do their part as well, taking on their share of responsibility, both when choosing their leaders and in paying attention to the origin and use of the capital that fuels institutions, parties, movements, as well as economic and social development.

Armed with this belief, in 2012 our Association formulated and promoted the dissemination of a code of ethics for good politics called Carta di Avviso Pubblico (Avviso Pubblico Charter). Focusing on the principle of responsibility, the aim of the Charter is to strengthen transparency, integrity, and the accountability of the behaviour of those who hold a political office at a local, national and European level, and to facilitate the relationship between institutions and citizens, firmly believing that this contributes to concretely guaranteeing the pursuit of collective interests, to preventing malfeasance, to guaranteeing freedom, security and justice – principles also recalled in the preamble of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union – and to returning reliability and credibility to politics. Without reliability and credibility politics is weak and can be easily attacked by organised crime and corruption.
The Charter, which comprises 20 articles, provides concrete behavioural indications for local administrators and members of the national and the European parliament, about, for instance, the management of conflicts of interest, the exercise of discretionary powers, the funding of political activity, and the relationship with stakeholders, the media, judicial bodies, other institutions, and citizens.

Recently, the European Commission has included the Avviso Pubblico Charter in the Handbook of good practices in the fight against corruption.

Download the Avviso Pubblico Charter

Adhesions to the Charter must be sent to: organizzazione@avvisopubblico.it

Download the facsimile for the adhesion by individual public administrators or candidates (MS Word, 12 KB)