Italy gets a "strong" rating in the Public Integrity Index, which tracks corruption, openness and accountability in 25 countries. This peer-reviewed country report includes a timeline covering corruption over the past one to two decades, a reporter's notebook on the culture of corruption and an assessment of the six main integrity categories. The integrity scorecard lists the full set of integrity indicators with scores, commentary and references.
On April 29, 2003, a judge in a packed Milan court read a late-night statement reporting a verdict convicting Cesare Previti, former defense minister and a close aide of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, to 11 years in jail after a three-year trial. Previti, a lawyer and a member of the Chamber of Deputies, was found guilty—along with other lawyers—of bribing Rome judges in two corporate takeovers during the 1990s, one of which involved Berlusconi's Fininvest holding company. The Milan court ruled Fininvest provided Previti with money from Swiss bank accounts which was used to obtain a favorable verdict from Roman magistrates in a civil case that gave Mondadori, the first Italian publishing company, to Berlusconi, thereby ending a financial fight with entrepreneur Carlo De Benedetti. The three-judge panel depicted the affair as "the most devastating and the biggest corruption case in the history of Italy, and perhaps of the world." >>
The Italian Constitution guarantees the right of free meeting, without previous authorization, for any purpose not forbidden by criminal law. This right is fully enforced, as there are no barriers for the creation of new CSOs, there is no need for licenses and there are no costs for creating a CSO. Over the past year, the government has not banned a CSO for nonviolent advocacy.
The Constitution also guarantees the right to form and participate in trade unions. In Italy there are three major—and many minor—trade unions actively engaged in social and political activity. >>