AGCM

In 2016 the trend of requests for the legality rating from companies - the recognition granted by the Italian Competition Authority (ICA) to virtuous enterprises under the law of 2012 - increased continuously. In the year just ended, in fact, the applications for obtaining this ‘mark of quality’, which is a guarantee of legality and transparency, totalled 2118 compared to 1427 in 2015, with an increase of 48%. The number of ratings assigned also rose to 1499 in 2016, compared to 1046 in the previous year ( 43%). There were also 64 renewals compared to 40 in 2015 ( 60%).

As of January 2013, when the ICA’s Regulation came into force, 4603 applications for rating were received by the Authority; 2690 ratings were assigned (68% of cases), 161 (4%) were denied, 121 companies (3%) received confirmation of their ratings, 80 improved their quality level (2%), 108 had their ratings renewed (3.7%) and 10 had them revoked (0.3 %). There were 753 cases (19%) closed.

Approved by the Italian Parliament at the end of 2012 and entered into force with the ICA’s Regulation in 2013, the legality rating is the ‘award’ instrument that the ICA has been entrusted with, assigning a score from one to three ‘stars’ to virtuous companies which have an annual turnover of over two million euros and meet a number of legal requirements. To get one ‘star’, the company owner and other executives must not have a criminal or tax infringement history. In addition not to being sentenced for antitrust offences in the two prior years, the company must make payments and financial transactions over one thousand euros exclusively by means of traceable instruments. The Regulation establishes six additional requirements for companies to obtain a higher score; the companies that meet half of them get two ‘stars’, while those that meet all of these six requirements are assigned and gets three ‘stars’.

The rating awarded by the Authority, according to the aforementioned law ‘is taken into account in the granting of funds by public administrations, as well as access to bank credit’. Under the same legislation, ‘credit institutes that fail to take account of the legality rating when granting a loan to a company are required to transmit a detailed report of the reasons for their decision to the Bank of Italy’.

The complete list of companies that have so far obtained the legality rating, with their relative scores, is published on the website of the Italian Competition Authority (www.agcm.it).

Rome, 5 January 2017