Data Card - Cohesion policies and confiscated assets
1. The national strategy for the for recovery and reuse of confiscated assets
A few months before the establishment of the National Day, the 2017 Budget Law had foreseen the definition of a "National Strategy for the for recovery and reuse of confiscated assets with support of the cohesion policies" (Law 232/2016, art. 1, paragraph 611), that represents an instrument of coordination, guidance and support for state administrations, local authorities and all those organizations who for different reasons intervene in the management of confiscated assets by the implementation of projects aimed at recovery and reuse for public or social purposes while leveraging at the same time the support of cohesion policies in the territorial development.
The Strategy - which is one of the transversal strategies envisaged in the 2014-2020 programming period presented on the OpenCoesione portal - was therefore approved with CIPE Resolution no. 53/2018 and is guided by the General Objective of effectively and efficiently using real estate and corporate assets confiscated from organized crime, through enhancement interventions supported by cohesion policies, divided into 3 Specific Objectives: the Strengthening the capacity and cooperation of the institutional actors responsible for the process of freezing, preserving the value and return to the community of illegally acquired assets, Policies for the management and preserving the value of confiscated real estates; re-entry into the legal economy circuit from the organized crime assets.
Among the instruments for the implementation of the National Strategy, one of the most recent is the plan for exemplary confiscated assets in the South, financed with two subsequent CIPE resolutions.
In particular, Resolution no. 48/2019 allocated 15 million euros of Development and Cohesion Fund 2014-2020 for the enhancement of the agro-industrial company with adjoining rural village "La Balzana", located in the municipality of Santa Maria La Fossa (CE), to be used for the purposes of "Agri-food park of typical products of Campania ". With the subsequent Resolution no. 61/2020 instead assigned 10 million euros of Development and Cohesion Fund 2014-2020 for a specific axis of the plan aimed at supporting the project activity of public bodies committed to defining properties and assets subject to confiscation located in the South and qualified as exemplary. In particular: a) call for expression of ideas; b) definition of management plans; c) elaboration of definitive or executive projects, starting from the technical and economic feasibility projects and related preparatory activities.
2. Confiscated assets, OpenCoesione and Open Government Partnership
OpenCoesione is one of the national initiatives envisaged as part of the Open Government Partnership (OGP), an international initiative aimed at supporting member countries in making administrations more transparent, responsible and open to innovation.
With the publication of the 4th National Action Plan, which renewed the commitment to the transparency of government actions and the active participation of citizens, the Evaluation and Analysis Unit for Programming (NUVAP) of the Department for Cohesion of the The Presidency of the Council has undertaken a commitment on the transparency of data on assets seized and confiscated from mafias and organized crime within the general objective aimed at "Open data". These are commitments agreed with the National Agency for the administration and destination of assets seized and confiscated from organized crime and focused on the development of an open system of data and actions for transparency related to the assets, with the contribution of civil society and in particular of the Libera and Ondata Associations which together developed the ConfiscatiBene portal.
Among the actions planned and already implemented by NUVAP, as part of the OpenCoesione initiative, we point out three as follows: the first (1.26) involves the introduction of a confiscated assets tag in the CUP Index System, the second (1.27) follows the consequent integration of the IGRUE (General Inspectorate for Financial Relations with the European Union) protocol with identification data of confiscated assets in the unitary monitoring system of cohesion policies. The CUP stands for Codice Unico Progetto (in eng. Unique Project Code), which identifies a public investment project and is the key tool for the functioning of the Public Investment Monitoring System.
Thanks to the implementation of the two actions, starting with the update of the portal with the data as at 31 December 2020, published in March 2021, OpenCoesione can also guarantee the implementation of action 1.30 more effectively, which foresees the publication of a focus Open Data on projects and subjects financed by cohesion policies for the enhancement of confiscated assets. The progress of all actions is monitored on the open.gov.it portal.
3. Action 1.30: the "focus" of confiscated assets
As indicated at the beginning of this DataCard, OpenCoesione publishes a focus dedicated to confiscated assets. As of 31 December 2020, there are n.415 projects within the perimeter of the analysis, for a total value of public funding of € 273.21 million, while the overall amount of disbursement is 123.06 million euros.
Almost 21% of the projects (85) foresee funding of less than 100 thousand euros. 67.2% of the projects, on the other hand, have a public cost of less than 650 thousand euros. Overall, these projects sum 27.9% of overall funds.
78% of the funds, almost 215 million euros, are financed under the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) for a total of 300 projects. Most of the investments and projects are concentrated in the Southern Regions, and in particular in Sicily for 84.80 million euros (151 projects), Campania 82.53 million euros (99 projects) and Calabria 48.64 million euros(84 projects).
4. The transparency of local authorities: Libera's action
Out of 1,076 municipalities monitored, there are 670 Italian municipalities - beneficiaries of the confiscated real estates - who do not publish the list of these assets on their institutional website according to the law requirements (62% of the total).
The negative record in absolute terms is represented by the Municipalities of Southern Italy and the major islands with 392 municipalities that do not publish a list, followed by Northern Italy with 213 municipalities and the Center with 65 municipalities that do not publish data.
At regional level, among the most committed regions reaching or even exceeding the 50% of the municipalities that publish a list, are Basilicata with 67% of the municipalities that publish a list, Marche with 60%, Emilia Romagna and Liguria with 50% of Municipalities and Lazio which with 49%. The less transparent regions appear to be Umbria where only 14% of the Municipalities publish a list, Trentino Alto Adige (25%), Abruzzo (26%), Sardinia (27%) Tuscany and Veneto (31%), Lombardy (32%) Campania (34%).
N. 97 municipalities, equal to 24% of the total, present an image PDF (as the result of simple scan) or data totally useless in the open data machine readable logic. The monitoring also covered other important information on the life-cycle of the confiscated property: 35% of the Municipalities did not specify an institutional or social destination, 17% did not specify a specific location. Furthermore, 46% of the Municipalities do not present information on the square footage or hectares of the confiscated property.
The dataset in open format containing all the data relating to the research is available on the confiscatibene.it blog which can be reached at the link
5. Projects
The Agri-food Park of the typical products of the Campania Region at Balzana
The intervention - as part of the Plan for the enhancement of exemplary confiscated assets - concerns the agricultural complex called "La Balzana", consisting of about 31 agricultural lands for a total of 200 hectares of extension, 20 farmhouses and 14 rural buildings (sheds and stables). Resolution no. 48/2019 of the CIPE has allocated 15 million euros to La Balzana. The project includes interventions related to reception / residence, teaching, specialized training, production and sale of food products, rural tourism. The idea is to concentrate in one place the cultivation of wheat, tomatoes, various vegetables, fruit and other typical agricultural products, buffalo and other animal farms, their transformation into bread, pasta, buffalo mozzarella from Campania, meats and cured meats, wines and spirits (mostly IGT and DOP), and then provide the catering and restaurant service, the establishment of an agricultural institute with an adjoining agricultural cooperative for students, research and specialized training centers, residences for workers and for tourists.
An ambitious project that will be able to find useful synergies with the Carditello Foundation and the Carditello Palace, already under development thanks to the funds of the cohesion policy and less than two kilometers distant.
Casa Nostra, the farm of legality in Lentini (SR)
The "Fattoria della Legalità" is a structure created thanks to a 2.56 million euro financed in the framework of the NOP CONV ERDF SICUREZZA. The farm is located in the Municipality of Lentini (SR), on 42 hectares of land in the Cuccumella district confiscated from the mafia and assigned on free-basis loan for 25 years to the "Beppe Montana" social cooperative, established in 2010 with aim to manage the assets confiscated from criminal organizations in Lentini, Belpasso, Ramacca and Motta Sant'Anastasia. The Beppe Montana cooperative manages a total of 90 hectares of land, cultivating oranges, lemons, olives, aubergines, tomatoes, peppers, courgettes and wheat under organic farming procedures. During 2020 the cooperative activated a project for the job placement of inmates of the Augusta Prison House (SR).
The “Volpe Astuta” scout base in Palermo
The fund is an agricultural land of about 20,000 square meters planted with citrus groves inside which there is a building of about 247 square meters, built in the early eighties and renewed in 2015, thanks to the project financed under the NOP CONV ERDF SICUREZZA, which led to the "establishment of an international AGESCI scout base aimed at promoting the culture of legality". Info: http://www.basevolpeastuta.it
As part of the At the School of OpenCohesion project, during the 2017-2018 school year the project was monitored by the ASOC Team-puluni team at the illegality of the "Albert Einstein" scientific high school in Palermo. Follow the team's activities here. Read the Monithon report here.
Dulcis in fundo, social chocolate
In Casal di Principe (CE) "Dulcis in fundo" is a place where you get lost in delicious temptations of chocolate in all shapes and sizes. It is a social chocolate cooperative that involves young people with special needs, introducing and facilitating their labour access favouring, at the same time, the return to craftsmanship and to the tradition. Therapeutic cooking is the key that helps these children to enable the use of all senses.
Last but not least - located inside a confiscated property - it is a laboratory in which chocolate is spiced up every day with positive messages, hope and rebirth.
An intervention is currently underway aimed at consolidating and strengthen the activity, with a funding from the ROP ESF CAMPANIA in favor of the Davar cooperative, founded in 2003 thanks to the meeting of some boys of the Catholic Action of the Parish of San Nicola di Casal di Principe, the church of Don Peppe Diana. Since 2001 Davar Onlus, with a public tender promoted by Agrorinasce, has obtained the production space inside a property confiscated from the Camorra for the "Casa delle Associazioni" necessary for the creation of the social chocolate laboratory.