“SAFE-IN – Strengthening Actions against Fraud: Empowering Whistleblowing Directive Compliance” is the project launched about a year ago by ANCI Lombardia to work on the issues relating to Legislative Decree no. 24/2023, with which Italy implemented EU Directive 2019/1937, known as the “Whistleblowing Directive”, which introduced a single regulation for the public and private sectors, repealing and amending the previous legislation, and strengthening the protection for those who report illicit conduct in violation of European and national regulatory provisions.

At the end of the activities, as Matteo Luigi Bianchi, Coordinator of the Department of Europe – International Cooperation – Cross-border Relations of ANCI Lombardia, highlighted, “the Association promoted a conference to highlight the results achieved by the project and to address in depth the most relevant issues related to whistleblowing.” The action of ANCI Lombardia is part of the initiatives promoted for the associated entities, since, as the General Secretary Rinaldo Mario Redaelli highlighted, “out of 1500 municipalities in Lombardy, 1000 have less than a thousand inhabitants, if the large cities manage to deal with the many issues and events that concern them, in the small towns there is greater difficulty and sometimes help is needed. With this project we wanted to implement an initiative that could transfer in a simple way, also through a practical manual, some skills, to translate them into a comprehensive act also by those less prepared structures.”

Carmine Pacente, President of the Department of Europe – International Cooperation – Cross-border Relations of ANCI Lombardia, continued the reflection by highlighting that the Association has “the objective of increasingly entering the decision-making trajectories of Brussels, also considering that Matteo Bianchi and I are part of the Committee of the Regions and, through this entity, we try to guide high-level decision-makers on issues that concern local authorities, especially medium or small-medium sized ones that struggle to follow the thousand challenges to which they must respond”. With regard to Europe, Pacente also considered that “the important thing is to understand that the most complicated part is not the planning but rather the ability to actually implement these projects in the territory and locally innervate the decisions that are taken at a European level.” Transparency Agency Italy collaborated on the project, represented by its President Michele Calleri, who highlighted how the agency, which is based in Berlin, represents “the largest organization that prevents international corruption. It studies civil society and how it relates to the State; measures the perception of corruption in the public sector in 180 countries, through the evaluation of 13 analysis tools and a survey of experts.”

To get into the merits of the project activities, Project Manager Giorgia Pasciullo took the floor, recalling how “with the “SAFE-IN” project ANCI Lombardia wanted to offer practical tools to combat fraud, raise awareness among the recipients of the legislation and strengthen the skills of operators. In the twelve months of activity we started the analysis of the legislation, work carried out with the collaboration of Trasparency Italia, and we started working tables with the staff of local administrations, businesses and public companies, involving over 350 people. The central node of our project were the laboratories, with which the participants were able to experiment with new practices and which made materials and information available on the project website.”

Whistleblowing Regulations

The morning continued with an analysis of the Italian regulatory framework on whistleblowing to understand its impacts and challenges for public and private entities.
The discussion on these issues was opened by Nicoletta Parisi, Professor at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, who highlighted how, faced with European legislation, “the States could seize the opportunity to innovate the national system, dictating a single regulation for reporting both European and national illicit acts, and this, in a farsighted way, was the path followed by Italy”, even if, as the Professor observed, there remain critical issues regarding the implementation of the initiative in our country.
Antonia Magnotti, Director of the Whistleblowing Office of ANAC – National Anti-Corruption Authority – took the floor to present the Authority’s activities and the reporting channels available to those who want to report episodes of corruption.
Ermelindo Lungaro, expert of ANCI Lombardia on the topic of legality, spoke by presenting the Guidelines and good practices of the SAFE-IN project and, considering what was collected in the laboratory meetings, highlighted that “we must promote an organizational culture that leads to organizational improvement, and this goes beyond the adoption of procedures, because, among other things, the company top management also counts, which must believe in the tools adopted and give coherent messages, highlighting that it believes in what is being promoted.”

Perspectives and testimonials

The conference then brought together several stakeholders, starting with Yuri Santagostino, President of Confservizi Lombardia, an organization that saw 30 associated companies participate in the SAFE-IN workshops, who focused on the need for an organizational culture that supports the emergence of new practices regarding reporting, through forms of awareness and training.
From the Metropolitan City of Milan, Antonio Sebastiano Purcaro, General Secretary and General Director, explored the point of view of the public entity involved in the issue, while from Confindustria, Alessia Bausano, from the Legislative and Regional Affairs Office, Corporate Law Adviser Legal Affairs, Justice and Legality, took the floor, considering how the private sector pays particular attention to whistleblowing because it is part of the tools to increase the internal transparency of companies and to prevent risks and damage to them.
At the end of the round table, some participants of the laboratory training courses of the three clusters spoke: Isidoro Niola, Legal Director Italy of Johnson & Johnson Medical SPA; Antonio Costa, Head of Corruption Prevention and Transparency of the Provincial Health Authority of Messina; Luca Baccaro, General Manager of ALER Pavia-Lodi and Antonio Buonafine, Head of Governance & Compliance of Arvedi Group.

The Memorandum of Understanding

At the end of the event, ANCI Lombardia signed a memorandum of understanding with the Metropolitan City of Milan, Transparency International and Confservizi Lombardia to promote training and project courses on the topic of whistleblowing

Down below the materials shared during the event:

27012025_Presentazione Transparancy International (Calleri)

27012025 Convegno Whistleblowing – presentazione Confindustria ( Bausano)

27012025 Presentazione (Magnotti)