Transparency International Italia first proposed the use of Integrity Pacts to oversee public procurement by the Milan Municipal Government in 2000. In 2001, the Milan Municipality agreed to use IPs in its public contracting. Other Italian municipalities such as Turin, Bergamo, and Monza also adopted Integrity Pacts to monitor public procurement. Strong results on the positive impact of the use of IPs in Milan resulted in the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding on 10 October 2009 between Transparency International Italia, SAeT (the prior Anti-Corruption and Transparency Service) and ANCI (National Association of Italian Municipalities) for the further promotion of use of Integrity Pacts in municipal procurement.

Today, the use of Integrity Pacts to oversee public procurement is slowly increasing. It remains at the discretion at the regional or municipal level or any contracting authority whether to use an Integrity Pact as part of the tender process.

The Italian legal framework, however, validates that where Contracting Authorities require Integrity Pacts as part of a tender process, failure to comply with the provisions of an IP justifies the exclusion of the non-compliant company from the bid. This principle, which provides an important endorsement of IPs, is included in Article 1, paragraph 17 of the Italian Anti-Corruption Law (190/2012) (“Contracting authorities may include in their notices , notices of tender or letters of invitation that failure to comply with the clauses contained in the legality protocols or integrity pacts shall constitute grounds for exclusion from the competition.”) as well as Section 3.1.13 of Italy’s National Anti-Corruption Action Plan from 2013, which was validated through 2019.

Furthermore, the new Italian Anti-Corruption Agency’s Decision No. 8 of 17 June 2015 encourages public administrations to promote the use of IPs in public procurement.

As part of the Integrity Pacts Programme – Safeguarding EU Funds in Europe project, four projects in Italy were selected to implement Integrity Pacts as part of the tender and project implementation process.

Two developments in 2019 further strengthened the Italian government’s policy endorsement that encourages procurement agencies to use Integrity Pacts.

• The latest Italian National Anti-Corruption Strategy adopted in November 2019 goes into significant additional detail on the legality of IPs under Italian and European law, their usefulness, and cites the Safeguarding EU Funds project IPs as best practices to be emulated by other Italian contracting authorities.
• Implementation of Integrity Pacts has been endorsed as part of Italy’s Open Government Partnership National Action Plan 2019 – 2020 with implementation targeted for Sicily, including the Palermo Municipal government.